Sri Lanka Youth Netball team will face tough opposition in their quest to retaining the Championship they won in 2015.
Nadee to captain Sri Lanka at 10th Asian Youth Netball Championship
Nadee Fernando will captain the Sri Lanka Youth Netball team at the upcoming 10th Asian Youth Netball….
Sri Lanka will take part in the 10th Asian Youth Netball Championship which will take place from the 6th-13th May in South Korea.
“We have trained for 51 days as of now. I believe we had a successful training camp but the period we had for it was not enough. I had to go in for a shortcut,” a disappointed Head Coach Tamara Liyanage expressed with ThePapare.com.
She was also not pleased with the squad that the selection committee presented to her which had omitted a couple of players she thought deserved a place.
“We focused more on fitness. Since this is U21 side the players are from school level. School fitness standards are low. Some days we had three training sessions putting focus on attack defending and shooting,” she added on how hard and fast the team had to train and learn.
Training at the Jayathilake Indoor Stadium in Nawalapitiya had its fair share of pros and cons.
“Training at Nawalapitiya we had the indoor as much as we wanted. But the indoor stadium standard was low for this kind of international tournament preparations. I requested for a few training sessions at the Sugathadasa Indoor but did not get them.”
Sri Lanka had a vastly experienced side when they won the 9th Asian Youth Netball Championship. Gayani Dissanayake, who had already represented the senior side for a few years, captained the side which had national players in Dulangi Wannithilake, Thishala Algama, Gayanjali Amarawansa and Ruvini Yattigammana.
However the current side only has three players from the 2015 squad and none of them has represented Sri Lanka.
“We have Nadee (Fernando), Sashini (Perera) and Sachini (Rodrigo) form the 2015 squad. Of them Sachini is the best out of the three She played as Center in all the matches in 2015. Mandira Charuni our Goal Defence, I believe she is among the top 5-6 GD’s in Sri Lanka. I am mainly counting on Sachini and Mandira,” Liyanage mentioned about her hopeful stars.
Liyanage was also disappointed on the practice matches they had.
“We only had two practice matches with girls’ teams. Navy had the full team. We won 1 and lost 1 by 2 points both. That was good but only played 1 match with Air Force as they had a weakened team. We needed high performance matches. However since there was a boys’ netball teams based in Nawalapitiya we had a few games with them. They were fast which helped the girls to improve as well.”
Regarding the competition and hopes she believe it will be tough for Sri Lanka but hope the youngsters retain the championship.Sri Lanka will compete from Group A which includes Hong Kong, Thailand, Maldives and Pakistan.
Group A – Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Thailand, Maldives, Pakistan
Group B – Malaysia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, India, Korea
“Hong Kong is a strong side. They have all 12 players from 2015 and have played SEA games. They have played and trained in Singapore. Singapore and Malaysia will also be tough opponents,” she mentioned.
“We are aiming for the Championship but sad to say but we only got the ‘match ball’ after finishing all the practice sessions. We will have to play with the Gilbert ball but practiced with Molten balls. Asian Federation sent them on the 8th of April but we only got them on the 25th of April,” a disappointed Liyanage concluded.
Squad
Nadee Fernando (Kalutara District) – Hashini Perera (Army SC) – Kaveena Rajapaksha(Army SC) – Sachini Rodrigo (Army SC) – Poornima Lakshani (Army SC) – Maleesha Rathnayake (Seylan) – Mandira Sampath (Seylan) – T.N.Hapuarachchi (Navy SC) – Nirmani Perera (Navy SC) – Hansima Dissanayake (Air Force SC) – Rashmi Perera (Presbyterian Girls’ College) – Tharushi Ilangarathne (Visakha Vidyalaya)
Fixtures (Sri Lanka Matches)
- 6th May – Sri Lanka v Thailand
- 8th May – Pakistan v Sri Lanka
- 9th May – Sri Lanka v Maldives
- 10th May – Sri Lanka v Hong Kong
