Sri Lanka reach final

Chris Dhambarage reporting from India

Bangalore, India, July 29 - The Sri Lanka netball team produced a superb late rally to reach the final of the fifth Asian Netball championships defeating a fighting Thailand outfit by 44 goals to 40 goals in a thrilling semifinal encounter worked off at the Sree Kanteerva indoor stadium in Bangalore here on Saturday.

Even then Sri LankaŸ_(tm)s success in this crunch game was in the balance at one stage as they were trailing 9-10 at the end of the first quarter and again the scores were level 19 all at the completion of the second quarter.

They however got their act together well during the fourth and final quarter and eventually went on to win the game by a four point margin.

The Sri Lankan girls failed to take the initiative and their new combination of Gishanthi Jayakody and Akila Jayawardena as their new goal shoot did not produce the expected results. Sri Lanka also made another tactical change by shifting the dynamic Preseilla Koch into the centres place and moving W. A. Sujani as wing defence.

The Sri Lanka team was under tremendous pressure for the first time in the tournament as they committed a series of mistakes that almost cost them the match. They decided to play the usual combination of Jayakody and Shanika Dilhani as the goal attack and goal shoot respectively and also brought back Sujani back into the centres place.

Sri Lanka recovered magnificently after the early setback as they took a close 30-28 lead at the end of the third quarter. They were somewhat upset by the delaying tactics used by the Thailand side who decided to take a number of time outs rather unnecessarily. In fact quite strangely the match lasted for more than 90 minutes following a series of stoppages.

In fact the Thailand skipper Phakamas Ratanbuth was sent on sin bin during the deciding fourth and final quarter of the match.

An angry Sri Lankan coach Thilaka Jinadasa blamed the organizers for not taking any measures to stop the unnecessary time wasting used by Thailand which was a tactic to unsettle the Sri Lankan team. The former Sri Lankan vice captain said that she has never seen such an ugly game of netball in her life as the two teams did not even shake hands after the contest.