Sri Lanka’s Nadeeka Pushpakumari won her opening bout in the women’s 51kg division at the Asian Games on Tuesday morning, beating Afghanistan’s Lala Kargar on a 5-0 unanimous decision to advance from the round of 32, Hiru News reported.
World Boxing — the sport’s international federation, which runs the Games competition — gives her full name as Nadeeka Pushpakumari Ranasinghe Arachchige and places the bout in the opening session at Nishio Gymnasium on day two of the boxing programme at Aichi-Nagoya 2026.
Two defeats Hiru does not mention
Hiru reports the win alone. The federation’s account of the same day records two other Sri Lankans losing:
- Keshani Hansika Kasthuri Kasthuri Arachchige was beaten 5-0 by Vietnam’s Vo Thi Kim Anh in the women’s 54kg division, in the same morning session.
- Rukmal Prasanna Podi Arachchige went out of the men’s 55kg division to Iraq’s Abbas Qasim Hamdan Al Sarray by third-round stoppage, in the evening session.
So Sri Lanka’s day-two record in boxing was one win from three bouts, not the unqualified result the single-item filing suggests.
The margin
A 5-0 line means all five judges scored the bout for the Sri Lankan. The federation does not publish her round-by-round cards, so how comfortable the win was is not established — in two other 51kg bouts the same morning it explicitly notes that every judge awarded every round, and it makes no such note here.
That distinction matters. On day one, Lahiru Chandrabandara’s 4-1 win over Yemen’s Mustafa Saeed looked comfortable on the decision line but was scored 29-28 by every one of the five judges — a single round apart on all cards.
Where this leaves the boxers
Pushpakumari advances to the round of 16. Thirteen boxers in total came through three weight categories on the day.
Chandrabandara, who won on day one, is also into the last 16 at 70kg. Boxing is one of 25 sports Sri Lanka is contesting from a 156-athlete contingent that travelled to Japan on 13 September, and one of only seven sports in which the country has ever won an Asian Games medal.
Hiru adds that Sri Lankan athletes were also scheduled to compete in swimming, basketball, kabaddi, gymnastics, table tennis and hockey on the same day.
A spelling note
Hiru’s headline spells the boxer “Nadeeka”; its own body text spells her “Nadika” — a split inside a single filing. World Boxing uses Nadeeka, which this article follows.
Not reported
Neither source gives her next opponent or the date of the round-of-16 bout, her age, club or record, or whether this is her first Asian Games. Hiru reports no result from any of the other sports it lists as being contested that day.
