SL beat WI, reached into T20 semi final
Mirpur: Sri Lanka on Thursday made it to the ICC World T20 final for the third time knocking out defending champions West Indies by 27 runs via the Duckworth Lewis method.
Batting first in the first semi-final, Sri Lanka scored an impressive 160 for six riding on important contributions from Angelo Mathews (40) and Lahiru Thirimanne (45). In reply, West Indies were 80 for four in 13.5 overs when a storm followed by heavy downpour ruled out any chances of a game.
Dwayne Smith (17) made his intentions clear in the first two balls bowled by Nuwan Kulasekara, lofting him for a boundary and a six respectively as 17 came from the first over.
After their stand-in captain provided twin breakthroughs, the rejuvenated Lankans stemmed the flow of runs with some tight bowling.
Lendl Simons (4) was done in by a flipper from leg-spinner Seekkuge Prasanna as he was caught plumb on the back-foot.
West Indies were struggling at 34 for three at the start of the eighth over.
Marlon Samuels’ struggle on the slow Mirpur track continued as he simply failed to get going against Rangana Herath and Prasanna. His first positive shot was an uppish cover drive off Herath.
Dwayne Bravo (30) got his first six off the same over from Herath, lofting him over extra cover, but it proved to be his only big hit of the match as he mistimed a pull shot for Mahela Jayawardene to take a nice catch running forward from his deep square leg position.
The target was very difficult but skipper Darren Sammy has done it against Australia. However, the Caribbean fans’ hopes were dashed by the thundershowers.
Earlier, Lahiru Thirimanne arrested a top-order slide while Angelo Mathews played a lovely cameo as Sri Lanka posted a fighting total.
Thirimanne scored 44 off 35 balls while Mathews blasted his way in the final two overs, smashing 40 off only 23 balls. Veteran opener TM Dilshan (39) did not convert a good start while the other two seniors Jayawardene (0) and Sangakkara (1) did not get going.
Mathews scored 32 runs in the final two overs bowled by Krishmar Santokie and Andre Russell. Mathews had three fours and two sixes in his knock.
The Lankan openers gave a flying start to the innings, getting 32 off the first three overs. It was one such day when opening bowlers Santokie (2/46 in 4 overs) and Samuel Badree (1/23 in 4 overs) did not get the length right in the initial overs. Badree, however, did well in the second spell.
After an uppishly driven boundary by Dilshan off Badree past mid-off, young Kusal Perera (26) got stuck into Santokie hitting him for two boundaries in the second over. First was a swing past deep fine leg as he bowled it on pads, the second was picked from outside the off-stump and hit over mid-wicket.
