Australia beat Sri Lanka despite Mathews’ heroics

Australia beat Sri Lanka despite Mathews’ heroics

Australia beat Sri Lanka by five runs in a nail biting One Day International (ODI) of the Commonwealth Bank Series at WACA, Perth in Australia on Friday, February 10, 2012.

Batting first, the home team was unable to make a big impression and was all out for 231 runs in 49.1 overs. Skipper Michael Clarke was the only batsman to score a half-century in the innings, as he top scored with 57 runs.

However, the veteran batsman was unable to bat throughout the innings, which saw his side bowled out with five balls to spare. There were also a few starts from some of the other Aussie batsmen, but no one was able to capitalise on that.

Sri Lanka’s bowlers were disciplined and almost all of them chipped in, picking up wickets. Lasith Malinga, Anglo Mathews and Nuwan Kulasekara managed to pick up a couple of wickets each in the innings.

In reply, the tourists got off to a decent start, courtesy a 40-run knock by opener Tillakaratne Dilshan. However, wickets started to tumble after the 20^th over, which almost knocked them out of the game.

Mathews was not ready to give up though, as he continued to score runs, not bothering about the fall of wickets in the end. He top scored the match with a solid knock of 64 runs, but was dismissed in the final over when his side needed six to win in a couple
of balls.

Australia’s Mitchell Starc was the pick of the bowlers, as he dismissed a couple of batsmen, including Mathews in the final over.

Clarke was happy with his bowlers, but said that the batting needed to fire. He stated, “Our bowlers deserved a lot of credit. We were probably 25-30 runs short on that wicket. Starc will learn a lot from this. The wicket was a bit slow, no one went on to
get a hundred today. I felt a little bogged down with the bat but tried to hang in there with the other guys.”

On the other hand, Sri Lanka’s captain Mahela Jayawardene added, “Great effort from Angelo, but we gave away too many wickets in the middle overs to lose our way. We did the hard work with the ball, we did not get a couple of big stands with the bat.”

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Posted by Waqar Masood on Feb 10 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry