Sri Lanka started their campaign at the first Women’s SABA Championships in Kathmandu with an easy win over Maldives on Tuesday.
Touted as one of the favorites, Sri Lanka dominated the game all the way down to the buzzer with their full court pressure defense to go top of the championship league table.
They didn’t just put pressure from the front but they usually double teamed and at times triple teamed on Maldives point guard making her difficult to find any outlet.
Maldivians weren’t too bad on defense as the final score might suggest. They did do well on rebounds considering the difference in size, but they didn’t make them count.
Although there was one or two quality individual talents in the Maldivian team, they could not get past their half court for much of the match, giving away countless turnovers, or rather Sri Lankans won them. Either way Maldives was in trouble throughout the game.
Unfortunately, they were just too slow with their passes; allowing Sri Lankans to close down easily. And when they did manage to get to the opponent perimeter their compact game meant it was difficult to get easy lay ups.
Needless to say, Sri Lanka opened up a considerable gap leading the first quarter 27-10 and kept extending further on each subsequent quarters.
By the end of the first half the game was done and dusted but Sri Lankans never let their guard down for a second.
In the end, Sri Lanka proved themselves to be entirely in a different league compared to their opponent Maldives.
It turns out that Maldivian team is largely made up of very young players two of whom are just 15 years old.
Maldives head coach, Ahmed Nazeef said after the match, “Age of our players was the problem, this is a very young team. Two of our players are just 15 year old and four are 16 years old. We trained for four months but one hour training without proper court is not enough.”
“We came with the aim of defeating any team but it is difficult”, he added.
While Sri Lanka coach, TM Amath, said that his team is here to win the championships.
Regarding his team’s full on performance right till the end, he said, “We wanted to acclimatise our team, so we played the entire bench.”
Final score: Sri Lanka 105 – 39 Maldives (27-10, 22-08, 22-12, 34-09).
Highest scorer: Silva Kumarine – 25 points.
Maldives squad: Aminath Raushu, Hussna Mohamed, Raifa Ibrahim, Fatimath Shailan Afzal, Marijam Zaina Siraj, Nawal Ibrahim Hassan, Aishafu Umairu, Mariyan Saffia Hassan, Dhyba Ahmed Ismail, Hawa Mikaila Haleem, Huma Ubaidhalla, Aishath Zaner Jinal.
Head coach: Ahmed Nazeef
Asst. coach: Hussain Hadhee
Manager: Mohamed Rasheed
Sri Lanka squad: Premila Fernando, Prasadi Fonseka, Natasha Parera, Anjalee Ekanayake, Inoka Sandamali, Sanduni Bollegala, Erandi Rajapakse, Niroshini Paiva, Erandi Gallage, Jayeliya Kumari, Kumarine Silva, Imesha Thathgarani.
Head coach: T. M. Amath
Asst. coach: Anuradha Wijesinghe
Manager: Paul Newmen
