Saturday, September 15, 2012

SRI LANKA SHOCK SINGAPORE



Singapore fell to a shock 3-2 defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka in the World League First Round at the Kuantan Hockey Stadium.

It was their second consecutive defeat, having lost badly 11-0 at the hands of hosts Malaysia the previous night.

They will now have to defeat Kazakhstan in their final match on Sunday to have any hopes of taking one of the two berths into the second round available to teams participating in this tournament.
Malaysia take on Kazakhstan in a later match and a win will give them one of the two spots available while Kazakhstan need to avoid a heavy defeat in the event they lose to Singapore.
The hosts will play Sri Lanka, who also have an outside chance if they can hold or defeat Malaysia when they play on Sunday night.

Sri Lanka opened the scoring in the 4th minute through Buddika Yapa Gunarathna and that jolted Singapore into action as they started dictating play.

And Singapore were duly rewarded when Nursabrina Banuh M. Gofar scored the equaliser in the 15th minute.

Having held a grip of the match, Singapore took the lead three minutes before the halft-time with Nursabarina nothing her second, her shot on the right sailing past a sea of legs to deceive Sri Lanka custodian Erandi Keerthirathna.
 It took Sri Lanka only a minute upon resumption of play to draw level when Buddika managed to outwith the Singaporean defence and put the ball past Singapore keeper Cookie Tan Koon Khim.

Then in the 50th minute came what was the tournament’s own goal as a shot by Sri Lanka’s Muthukuttige Prarthana from the left was left by Cookie but umpire Nur Hafizah Azman adjudged the ball was deflected by a Singaporean stick in the semi circle.

Nur Hafizah consulted fellow umpire Nirmala Dagar from India upon protests from the Singaporean players but the decision stood and Sri Lanka were ahead 3-2.

Try as they did, Singapore could not find the equaliser.