Sri Lanka's captain Lasith Malinga celebrates the dismissal of West Indies' batsman Dwayne Smith during their ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup semi-final match in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 3. (AP Photo)
DHAKA, APRIL 3 (AGENCIES): After an intensely fought contest, it was the rain which had the eventual say in the result as Sri Lanka sailed in to the final of the ICC WOrld T20 2014 with a 27-run win over West Indies via Duckworth Lewis method. Chasing 161 to win, storm and slight drizzle halted play. No sooner had the players and umpires walked off, the drizzle turned into a heavy downpour and there were hailstorms everywhere. This is Sri Lanka’s consecutive appearance in the World T20 final. Last time around they had lost to the same opposition in the final.
The first innings saw frequent shift in momentum but in the second, it was all Sri Lankan domination except for the first over. Dwayne Smith started off the chase in promising fashion hammering a six and a boundary. An erratic Nuwan Kulasekara further assisted the batsmen with his wayward deliveries. 17 came of the first. Skipper Lasith Malinga replaced Kulasekara and bowled a tidy first over. Chris Gayle has been unusually circumspect at the start and it was no different here. It’s common of Gayle to be cautious and then unleash his shots after settling in, but this approach of going in to a shell had started to hurt West Indies. And in a semi-final, the pressure only multiplied when he was bowled by Malinga off a bottom edge. But the in-form Dwayne Smith was still going strong until he was beaten by a slower delivery which came back in to him and saw his stumps disturbed.
More than the wickets, it was the sudden dip in run-rate that hurt the West Indies more as they fell short by D/L method. Since the 17-run first over, they managed 17 in the next six overs which describes the rusty approach against the spinners. With Lendl Simmons and Marlon Samuels, it was time to pick tup the pace when debutant Seekuge Prasanna foxed Simmons getting him out leg-before for four. The momentum briefly shifted when Dwayne Bravo went after the bowlers in quicktime to keep a check on the required rate which had soared to 12 by then. The pressure was always on the Windies to catch up and Bravo had done well to counter-attack Rangana Herath in the 13th over with a six and four. But that was it as he was caught brilliantly by Mahela Jayawardene off Kulasekara’s bowling for an 18-ball 30 which included three boundaries and a six.
Sri Lanka had walked in to the second innings on a high after late blitz from Angelo Mathews which had powered them to 160. With the quality of their bowling, even on a batting-friendly pitch, the target would be stiff.
