Australia and England have it easy against Sri Lanka

Chinthana Wasala reporting from Glasgow

Australia and England, two of the world's best rugby teams were too good for the Lankan boys as they both thrashed Sri Lanka 62-7 and 57-0 respectively in their first two games of the 20th Commonwealth Games, Rugby 7s here in Glasgow.

Australians dominated the entire game from the beginning and was leading 36-0 at lemons with three goals and three tries.

Aussie scoring spree continued in the second half as well and they scored two more tries during the first few minutes before Lankans added seven points in front of their name. Sri Lanka scored their first and only try of the game through Sandun Herath while skipper Fazil Marija added extra points. However, the men from Down Under scored another goal and a try before the final whistle to make it 62-7 in favour of them.

Lankans suffered their second loss yesterday, this time at the hands of England at the Ibrox Stadium amidst a full house.

The England attack was no match for Sri Lankan ruggerites. The Lankan boys showed certain amount of strong resistant in the first few minutes of the game, but failed to maintain the form at the hands of Englishmen who were definitely too strong for them. Englishmen ripped through Lankans defence line in most of the occasions they tried to, and managed to score 26 points to finish the first half 26-0. The English total included four tries with three conversions. They had no difficulty in dominating the second half too and added five more tries with three conversions to take the game 57-0.

Sri Lanka who missed the services of Yoshitha Rajapaksa who was unable to make it to the Games due to an injury, was to meet Uganda in the afternoon yesterday. Rajapaksa was replaced by Lavanga Perera

Lankan shuttlers in quarter-finals

Sri Lanka badminton team qualified for the quarter finals of the mixed group play and they were to meet England as the 20th Commonwealth Games continued for the third day at Glasgow last evening .

Sri Lanka beat Barbados but lost to Singapore on Friday. Yesterday, Sri Lanka went down to mighty Malaysia at the Emirates Arena where they were swept away with a 5-0 defeat. During the Malaysian encounter, former Olympian and champion shuttler Niluka Karunaratne met Daren Liew in the first men's individual event and lost 2-0 (21-17,21-12) .

Then Thilini Hendahewa competed against Jing Yi Tee in the women's individual match but could failed to impress handing over a 2-0 win to he Malaysian counterpart.

Then Karunaratne Brothers, Dinuka and Niluka took on Wee Kiong Tan and Wei Shem Goh in the men's doubles battle which turned out to be a tough one for the Malaysians to win. The two brothers did not let the Malaysians to have it easy and managed to take the lead on several occasions during the game.

However their attempt could not deprive the Malaysians from winning the two-setter and the Lankans went down 2-0 (21-17, 21-19).

Achini Rathnasiri and Upuli Weerasinghe met Loo Yin Lim and Vivian Kah Mun Hoo in the women's double and lost 2-0 (21-11, 21-8). Dinuka Karunaratne and Thilini Hendahewa also suffered a defeat in the hands of Peng Soon Chan and Lai Pei Jing in their mixed double encounter 2-0 (21-14, 21-14).

The quarter-finals were to start last evening, 10.15 p.m. Sri Lanka time.

Twenty one-year old Dinisu Saparamaadu was the first Lankan boxer to fight on the Glasgow ring yesterday but he could not move on to the next stage despite putting up a great fight against Lesotho's Mohlerepe 3-0

Other two Lankan boxers who were to be in action last night, were Dilshan Mohamed and Senanga Nawarathne.