Sri Lanka crash to second straight defeat
Sri Lanka crashed to their second successive defeat when they went down fighting 50-67 against Northern Ireland in the Netball World Cup Group ‘A’ fixture worked off at the M and S Bank Arena Indoor Stadium in Liverpool, England yesterday.
After their heavy 49-79 defeat at the hands of Zimbabwe in the opening game of the tournament on Friday, Sri Lanka produced an inspired performance before losing by a 17-goal margin.
Even then, Sri Lanka were trailing throughout the game as they conceded the first quarter to their opponents 13-18 and were nine goals behind (25-34) at half time. The Lankans made a determined effort to reduce the deficit with a tremendous all-round performance before conceding the third quarter to their opponents 12-17.
Sri Lanka were able to add a great amount of pressure to their opponents and enjoyed a great amount of success in the fourth and final quarter. In fact, this was the best period for the reigning Asian champions as they collected 13 goals and concede only 16 goals to their opponents.
However, Sri Lanka were always fighting a losing battle as the earlier damage was too much to be repaired and eventually, they ran out of time.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka Head Coach Thilaka Jinadasa said that her players would need to get used to playing more aggressively if they are to achieve success in the future.
“We have to be physically fit but we tried to play a clean game. I noticed that the Northern Ireland players were going body-to-body. My players don’t like it. We need to get used to the aggressive play,” she explained.
Jinadasa further noted that their game plan to go one-by-one did not click well and the players started to panic when they ran out of options.
“They didn’t move as they usually do. They kept on blocking. The other team were not running through. We didn’t have a lot of options offensively.”
“The plan was to go one-by-one and work on our centre passes. But unfortunately, we started to panic. It didn’t work well today,” she said.
Sri Lanka are currently at the bottom of the points table and they have another daunting task when they take on Australia today.