Sri Lanka team led by Gayanjali Amarawansa went down fighting to Wales by 56-68 in their World Cup Netball fixture played at Cape town, South Africa yesterday.
It was a close battle between both teams. Wales dominated the game with a gap of 12 points to win the match after good battle.
In fact first quarter Wales took an early lead 17-11 . In the second set both teams had a very close battle and finally 13-11 lead to take Wales 2-0 quarter lead.
Third set once again Wales lasses took a 20-18 lead. Sri Lanka head coach Thilaka Jinadasa adopted good tactics at the final quarter. After third quarter Sri Lanka was behind by 10 points and they made good passes to go forward in the final quarter. However after very close battle Wales got a 18-16 lead and final score read 68-56.
Both goal shooters Georgia Rowe and Tharjini Shivalingam performed well. Georgia made a good efforts 49 out of 50 with 98 precent success while Sri Lanka goal shooter Tharjini Shivalingam had 33 efforts from 35 with 94 present success while goal attack (GA) Semini was very successful with 7 attempts successful out of 7 and overall both team players gave a good display. Earlier Jamaica beat Sri Lanka 105-25 while South Africa outclassed Sri Lanka by 87-32.
However Sri Lankan lasses had less international exposure before World Cup put up a good show during league round of World Cup now waiting to play second round with other top teams which finally decide world rank.
The coach Thilaka Jinadasa in an exclusive interview with Daily News said their effort was to have a small gap against top ranked teams and they missed good chance to beat Wales.
Wales lost to Jamaica 72-40 but we had very big gap 105- 25 in Jamaica game and came to Wales game and our girls showed tremendous improvement said Thilaka . Sri Lanka is ranked 15 while Wales is ranked 11.
Dhammika Ratnaweera