The Sri Lanka Netball team were totally outclassed in the final of the 10th Asian Netball Championships as they went down by 41-31 to Malaysia.
Coming into the game Malaysia were slight favourites, having defeated the Lankans comfortably in a group stage encounter earlier in the week but Sri Lanka too came with a huge boost of confidence after defeating top ranked Singapore in the semi-finals.
In the semi-finals, where Sri Lanka upset tournament favourites Singapore, they got off to a very good start and lead right from the 1st quarter of the game, that wasn’t the case here though as Malaysia raced to a 4 goal lead at half-time with the score-line reading 17-13.
In the 3rd quarter Sri Lanka counter-attacked strongly but the Malaysians, who had barely got past Hong Kong in yesterday’s semi-final, gave no ground as they led by 6 goals with 15 minutes to go.
The game was all but done and dusted by the time the last couple of minutes of the match came by, with both sets of shooters not as accurate with their shots as would have expected. Malaysia ran away with the game, scoring 12 goals to Sri Lanka’s 8 in the final quarter as they went on to win their 1st Asian Netball Championship since the very 1st edition in 1985.
The Sri Lankans who have not won the championship since 2009, after having finished as runners-upin the last two editions, will have to take consolation from the win against Singapore who are ranked 10 spots ahead of Sri Lanka in the INF World Rankings.
Singapore managed a comfortable win over Hong Kong to claim the Bronze medal.
Tournament Standings
Gold Medal – Malaysia
Silver Medal-Sri Lanka
Bronze Medal – Singapore
4th Place – Hong Kong
5th Place –Thailand
6th Place – Brunei
7th Place – Chinese Taipei
8th Place – Japan
9th Place – Afghanistan
