February 22, 2008	Friday	Safar 14, 1429

KARACHI, Feb 21: The City School North Nazimabad and Habib Girls School (HGS) have reached the final of the Karachi Women’s Netball Cup 2008, being played here at the Habib Girls school ground.

The tournament, which resumed on Thursday after a nine-day break due to the national elections, has been re-formatted. It has now been reduced to just six teams since the players of the excluded teams were found to be above 16 years of age.

As a result of this change in format, the teams of City School PECHS and Karachi Grammar School (KGS) directly qualified for the semis.

On Thursday, City School N. Nazimabad overpowered City School PECHS 10-8. It was a close encounter with the N. Nazimabad chapter leading by 6-5 at halftime.

The second half saw them scoring another five goals over their rivals who replied with just three. Although the losing outfit was more agile in the field, covering a lot of ground with regular passing, they lacked in the shooting skills as their shooter Maliha Asfaq missed too many close chances.

Still Maliha was the major contributor for her side, scoring six out their total tally of eight goals. For the winners, Umama Qadri was absolutely superb, scoring eight of the ten goals. The match was umpired by Khalid Parvaiz and Muhammad Anwar.

The second semi-final between HGS and KGS was won by HGS 11-8.

The winners were leading by two goals at halftime to which they added five more in the next half while KGS replied with four each in both halves.

In a quick-paced match, KGS prompted many whistles of foul play from umpires Khurram Suleman and Khalid who reminded them that this was netball and not basketball where one could cover ground by bouncing the ball instead of giving passes.

Ramsha Agha of HGS made seven goals and shooter Iqra Abid made four. For KGS, Hasnat Hashwani scored seven goals.

The final and the deciding match for the third position will be played on Friday at the same venue.