Story By Koh Yizhe. Photos by Les Tan, Vanessa Lim and Marvin Lowe.

Toa Payoh Sports Hall, Sunday, 31 August, 2008 – Singapore started their Fisher and Paykel Nations Cup campaign in heartbreaking fashion against Sri Lanka with a 63-66 loss. After leading for most of the match, Singapore, who are ranked 13th in the world and are the reigning Asian Champions, let the game slip away in the last five minutes.

Standing at a massive 2.05m, Sri Lanka's GS Tharjini Sivakingam scored all 66 of their points and was instrumental in their victory. With her outstretched arms, she stood almost double of Singapore's Jean Ng’s (GK) height, who had the daunting task of marking her for half the game before Melody Teo, making her full international debut for Singapore, took on the task in the last two quarters.

Singapore were also without original starter Li Qingyi, who broke her arm two weeks before. She was replaced by Zhang Ting Jun, who was a former national player.

From the get-go, Sri Lanka's strategy was clear: lob the ball to Tharjini Sivakingam and it would be just a formality for her to reach out and place the ball into the net. Sri Lanka drew first blood but it wasn't before long that Singapore equalized and took the lead. Despite scoring every time Tharjini Sivakingam had the ball, Singapore were equal to it at the other end and were able to extend their lead. Mention has to be given to Jean Ng who did an excellent job preventing passes from reaching Sri Lanka's GS despite having a height difference of 31.5 cm.

Playing at an extremely fast pace, Singapore were able to force Sri Lanka into making multiple stray passes, basically cutting off supply to their GS. It was only close to the end of the first quarter that Sri Lanka started to get their passing game together. Singapore had a comfortable 17-13 lead heading into the second quarter.

The second started where the first left off, with Singapore in the lead and Sri Lanka attempting to get their passing game going. Both countries matched each other point for point and there wasn't a clear controller of the game. Singapore maintained their four-point lead, but it didn't take too long before Sri Lanka got their passing game going, and supply to their GS was once again restored. It was only a matter of time before they took the lead and they did so with less than a minute remaining. This sparked Singapore into action as they fought back and took the lead with the final throw of the second quarter to walk off with a slender 32-31 lead.

Singapore maintained a slender one-point lead for much of the third quarter. The paced of the game continued to be extremely quick, as Singapore slowly but surely extended their lead to four points at 43-39 close to the end of the quarter. However, just like the second quarter, Sri Lanka fought back to draw level at 44-44. Once again, Singapore turned up their game as their lead was threatened to end the quarter leading 47-45.

Singapore raced to a four-point lead within the first two minutes of the final 15 minutes. Sri Lanka, however, weren't going to go down without a fight. Ranked 17th in the world, they were equal to whatever the Asian Champions threw at them. As they stepped up their passing game one level, supply to their GS was constantly there and it wasn't before long till Singapore's lead was reduced to just one point.

Despite performing magnificently throughout the match, Singapore's GK, Melody Teo, who changed with Jean Ang after the half, was unable to prevent the ball from continually reaching Sri Lanka's towering GS. Sri Lanka took the lead with less than five minutes remaining and now, the pressure was on Singapore. The paced of the game was greatly increased as both teams knew this was the most important period of the match.

With their passing game at a whole new level, Sri Lanka were able to provided their GS with enough shooting opportunities and slowly extended their lead to five points. The whole sports hall would sigh as Singapore's GK made repeated valiant attempts to prevent the ball from reaching the towering figure of Tharjini. With a shooting percentage of 97%, Tharjini was the difference in the game as the match ended 66-63 in Sri Lanka's favour, with the disappointment clearly showing on the faces of the Singapore players.

In the other match on Sunday, underdogs Botswana never trailed in their match against Samoa, eventually, beating the world number five 49-34.

Singapore will play Samoa on Monday and Sri Lanka will play Botswana on Tuesday.