10 September 2022 12:00 am Views - 475
BY Namal Pathirage
- Reporting from Singapore
Unbeaten Sri Lanka will take on Hong Kong in their 12th Asian Netball Championship first semi-final encounter at the OCBC Arena in Singapore today. The second semi-final will be between Singapore and Malaysia.
Sri Lanka, the defending champions defeated India (102-14) and the Philippines (99-37) in the Group ‘A’ preliminary round and went on to beat Malaysia (55-53) Singapore (67-49) and Hong Kong (62-51) in the second-round matches before qualifying for the last four.
The winners of today’s semi-final will qualify to play in Sunday’s Asian Netball Championship final.
Sri Lanka has won the Asian Netball Championship on five occasions since the start of the tournament in 1985.
They won the title in 1989, 1997, 2001, 2009 and on the previous occasion in 2018. In addition, they have emerged runners-up on four occasions in 1985, 2012, 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Meanwhile, Singapore has won the title on three occasions in 2005, 2012 and 2014 and they were the runners-up at the previous tournament in 2018.
In addition, Malaysia has won the title on two occasions in 1985 and in 2016 while Hong Kong won the title in 1993.
The champions and the runners-up of this tournament will qualify from the Asian region to play in the 2023 Netball World Cup in South Africa.
Sri Lanka Coach Hyacinth Wijesinghe said that the team had reached the semi-finals through some hard work and got the services of only eight players from out of the 12-member squad.
She was also optimistic about Sri Lanka’s chances of making it to the final having already defeated their opponents Hong Kong in the second round quite convincingly.