Sri Lankan women spikers end up in 10th position

VOLLEYBALL: Sri Lankan Senior Women Volleyballers who secured the 10th position in the Asian Rankings after the completion of the 14th Asian Senior Women Volleyball Championship left for Colombo yesterday.

Sri Lanka on their way to secure this position won three out of their six games played during their stay here in Bangkok. Lankans playing in Group 'C' along with China and the hosts Thailand could not enter the top eight as they lost all their games in the preliminary round. Once they were put into group 'G' to compete for the places 9-13 they performed a little bit better. In this round the only game lost was to Indonesia in straight sets.

The Lankan women took a great stride during this stage of the game ousting strong Uzbekistanis in a thrilling game. The victory over Uzbekistan was the biggest upset in this group from which the Uzbekistanis could not any upward move and had to be in the last slot in the rankings.

The other major win for Lankans was when they completely outplayed Vietnam in successive sets which gave them some sort of hope to be in the ninth slot.

But this did not come right as the mighty Indonesians got the better of the the Lankan women their win secured the ninth position. The third victory for the Lankans was against New Zealand which they won going out for the full stretch of the game of five sets.

In the overall Rankings it was Japan who took the top position in the rankings with fourteen points from seven wins. China and Thailand followed secured the second and third slots in the rankings. The three top teams along with Korea will move to play in the 2007 World Cup and also for the Olympic qualifying round. Japan had a another success when one of their players Takahashis Miyuki was declared as the Most Valuable Player of the Championship.

For the Lankan team Chandima Akarawita and Irosha Udayangani played their hearts during the whole Championship. Irosha had a total of 48 points scored while Chandima's contribution for the Lankan team was 40.

Sri Lanka scored a tally of 255 points while giving away 261 points during their six games.

The following received special awards:

Best Scorer Pavlova Yelena (Kazakhstan), Best Spiker Xue Ming (China), Best Blocker Pleumit Thinkaow (Thailand), Best Server Kimura Saori (Japan), Best Digger Wanna Buakaew (Thailand), Best Setter Nootsara Tom kam (Thailand), Best Receiver Sano Yuko (Japan), Most Valuable Player Takahashi Miyuki (Japan).