Lanka unhappy about scrapping of Volleyball

By Namal Pathirage

Sri Lanka is unhappy that the Bangladesh SAF games organizers have decided to scrap Volleyball from the list of games at the 11th edition which will be held in Dacca, Bangladesh in November-December 2009.

Volleyball which is Sri Lanka’s national sport was held at the last games held in Colombo, last year and Sri Lanka has protested about the scrapping of this event. However the final decision on this will be taken at the South Asian Olympic Council Meeting which is scheduled to be held shortly.Seventeen events are scheduled for next year’s games and already fifteen of them have been identified.

Hosts Bangladesh will get the chance of naming two sports as they are the hosts and they have time till June to do so. The scheduled games are – Athletics (Men/women), Swimming(men/women), Hockey(men), Squash (Men), Kabbadi (men/women), Boxing(men), Football(men), Rifle shooting (men/women), Taekwondo(men/women), Karate(men/women), Wushu(men/women), Handball(men) Table Tennis (men/women), Archery (men/women). One significant factor at the next edition of the games will be that along with Volleyball, Cycling, Badminton, Rowing and Judo sports that were a part of the 10th SAF held in Colombo have been omitted. Sri Lanka won five ‘golds’ in the cycling event when it was held in Colombo. At the last games India led the tally with 118 gold medals with Pakistan and Sri Lanka traling at 43 and 37 gold medals apiece.