Badminton: Women take win

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New Zealand's women more than held up their end of the deal in a hard-fought 3-2 mixed teams badminton win over Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth Games today.

Following yesterday's 5-0 rout of Jamaica, the New Zealanders were pushed to the limit today by opponents boasting a similar ranking.

The scores were locked 2-2 going into the final match, the women's doubles, where Donna Haliday and Danielle Barry responded superbly, outclassing Chandrika Hettiarachchige and Thilini Jayasinghe

21-11 21-16.

Indeed, any match involving a New Zealand woman resulted in victory for the team in black while the men struggled.

Michelle Chan beat Jayasinghe 21-15 10-21 21-13 while Donna Haliday combined with Henry Tam to beat Hettiarachchige and Dinuka Karunaratna 21-12 21-15 in what proved to be a decisive mixed doubles result.

Earlier, Joe Wu went down 21-14 21-14 to Niluka Karunaratne while Tam and Oliver Leydon-Davis lost 21-11 21-16 to Karunaratna and Karunaratne.

The New Zealanders will want to maintain their unbeaten record against Northern Ireland later today before completing pool play tomorrow with what should be their toughest match, against tournament fourth seeds Singapore.

- NZPA