The Sri Lanka netball team, which performed so well during their 1st game of the 10th Asian Netball Championships against Japan, saw their worst nightmares realized when they fell to a 38-32 defeat against Malaysia just a few minutes ago.
Before leaving for the tournament, the Sri Lankans had identified Malaysia, who are currently ranked 22nd in the World, as their main threat in the group stages and it proved to be so as the Islanders found the going tough right from the word go.
The teams were pretty even in the 1st two quarters with the score-line reading 9 all at the end of the 1st quarter and 18-17 at the end of the 2nd quarter but a poor 3rd quarter saw the islanders trailing 32-23. They battled valiantly in the final quarter but the advantage given over to the opposition in the previous period of play was too big to catch up on and they ended up losing by 6 goals with the score-line reading 38-32.
Sri Lanka starts off Asian Championships with easy win
Sri Lanka had hoped to defeat Malaysia in a bid to avoid facing top ranked Singapore in the semi-finals of the competition, however, with this loss and Singapore’s victory over Hong Kong earlier in the day, it is almost certain that Sri Lanka will face their arch nemesis in the semi-finals on the 6th of this month.
Sri Lanka will face Brunei tomorrow in what is a must win game.
