Sri Lanka came back strongly after the early loss to Papua New Guinea (PNG), demolished USA (67-37) with a margin of 30 points in their second match of the Nation Cup netball tournament played at Soa Payoh Sports Hall, Singapore yesterday.
USA is the second ranked team in the tournament (19 th in world ranking) was favoured to win against fourth seeded Sri Lanka who is rank (23 rd in world ranking).
But the Sri Lankan girls were able to stay ahead from the start with a 14-10 score at the first quarter. The lead was increased to 15 points by half time (35-20).
Sri Lanka scored another 15 points in the third quarter where USA only managed 10 points (50-30). Sri Lanka lasses were on top gear in the last quarter and scored 17 points while USA were allowed only seven points.
In their opening game Sri Lanka lost to Papua New Guinea (PNG) by 76 points to 52 onSunday.
PNG took the early lead (21-13) at the end of the first quarter indicating of morescoring to come, yet Sri Lanka managed to maintain the same gap in the next quarter scoring 17 points which was similar to PNG in the second quarter (38-30).
The third quarter saw Sri Lanka lose possession on several occasions by trying to speed up the game without a strong strategic game plan. PNG took advantage of this situation and scored 19 points while Sri Lanka only managed 13 points.
Sri Lanka’s tall goal shooter Tharjini Shivalingam succeeded in scoring 47 in her 48 attempts while goal attack Semini Alwis added four points and Gayani Dissanayake added three to the Lankan tally.
T. Buldeen scored 48 points from 62 attempts while goal attack M. Roberts scored 28 points for PNG.
Sri Lanka will meet host Singapore today in their third game.
Hosts Singapore started the tournament on a winning note beating Ireland 42-31.
