India Vs Sri Lanka Match 5 Review
After winning all 3 matches in tri - series, Sri Lanka were high on their expectations and confidence of Sri Lanakn team was flying in sky. Indian team was a bit nervous as India lost first match against Sri Lanka. At toss, Sri Lanka again won the toss and decided to bat first as in later half, dew plays its part in deciding the winner of the match. India made three changes in team and Sudeep Tyagi, Amit Mishra and Dinesh Karthik made their way into playing eleven. So the Sri Lankan team. It also made three changes where TM Dilshan, Lakmal and Welegedara made their way in team.
MS Dhoni being confident with Tyagi, handed ball over to Tyagi to bowl first over. Tyagi feeling more confident after seeing captain's confidence in him, bowled first over as maiden with claiming Upul Tharanga's wicket on duck. Tharanga was caught behind and this increased confidence level of Tyagi. second over was bowled by S Sreesanth who was smashed for 2 fours in his first over by Dilshan. Then with combination of Tyagi and Sreesanth, Dilshan and Sangakkara started scoring runs freely by mostly smashing ball over the boundary rope. Then came the bowling change were Zaheer Khan replaced Tyagi and straight away, made dilshan to walk towards pavilion as he forced Dilshan to play at the bowl near off stump and was caught by Gautam Gambhir at 5th slip.
After Dilshan's wicket, came centurion of previous match, M Jayawardena but he took 8 balls to get off the mark as Z Khan was very strict towards his line and length ans was bowling very tight. This made him frustrated and gave his wicket to Z Khan, which was very soft dismissal and was caught by Virat Kohli. This made match very interesting but increased worries for Sri Lanka's captain K Sangakkara , as he had started running out of his partners at other end. After Dilshan's wicket, no other batsman except Sangakkara even reached double figures. Soon Kandamby, who has capacity to play longer innings but not this time and got run out. Big misunderstanding between sangakkara and kandamby resulted in loss of another big wicket of kandamby. Then comes Perara at the crease, as Indian team will never forget that Perera was the man because of which India had lost its chances of winning its first match against Sri Lanka in the series. Perera then started rotating strike and on other side, bowlers like Z Khan, S Sreesanth were bowling very tight as run rate dropped down from 6 per over to under 4 per over till over 15 as Sri Lankan team's score was 67 after 15 overs for loss of 4 wickets. Sri Lankan captain Sangakkara leading from the front started taking few chances against S Sreesanth and was successful in his approach. Then came another change in bowling and leg spinner Mishra was introduced to make the slow scoring rate even slower.But soon Perera perished in deep who was brilliantly caught by Yuvraj Singh on bowling of Amit Mishra. After 20 overs, score went on to reach 104 for 6. Sri Lanka into very very deep trouble.
Sri Lankan captain leading from the front, went to make his half century in 65 balls but the work is not yet done. Then Sangakkara went on scoring runs to make his team reach to a respectable total of 213 a target of 214 to win for India. To achieve a target of 214 seemed to be a very easy for team India but Indian team openers Gambhir and Karthik started off their innings as if they have been set a target of more than 300 to achieve. The duo scored runs in first 10 overs at the rate of 8.6 runs per over.
Karthik missed on to complete his another half century as he got out on 48. Then came Virat kohli to join Gambhir and started of his innings by keeping his strike rate hovering around 75.0. On the other hand, Gambhir was finding it difficult playing Randiv. On one of the deliveries, ball was completely missed by gambhir, letting ball go through minor gap between bat and pad. That ball bounced so much that even sangakkara got hit by ball on his helmet near his chin area. In very next two overs, he got dropped twice by Dilshan when he was on 41 and second by Thushara when gambhir was on 43 runs. But then Gambhir went on to score his 19th half century in One Day Internationals in 67 balls. Then Gambhir got out just loosing his concentration. Then came Yuvi and then India didn't wasted any time in taking batting powerplay because Sri Lanka weren't looking interested in taking bowling powerplay because sangakkara might have assumed that India want to win the match with bonus point and India will get bonus point if they win match inside 40 overs. So, sangakkara took advantage of this and didn't took bowling powerplay. then Kohli went on to complete his 5th half century in ODI's and then looked in hurry of finishing match as he smashed 4 fours in an over of Lakmal. Lakmal was 2nd most expensive of the lot as he gave 75 runs in his 10 overs without a wicket. Welegedara was most expensive as his economy rate was 9 runs per over. Randiv was the pick of the bowlers as his economy rate was around 3.2 in his 6 overs.
Thus, India went on to win the match in 33rd over along with a bonus point and by 8 wickets as Kohli remained unbeaten on 71. As expected, Man of the Match Award was awarded to Zaheer Khan .This win made India reach finals of the tri-series against Sri Lanka. Win with bonus point improved India's net run rate to +0.72 while that of Sri Lanka dropped down to -0.05.
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