World Cup Report Match 18: Sri Lanka v Bangladesh

Scorecard

As far back as January, it was fairly obvious that Sri Lanka's only chance of winning the World Cup - or any game in the World Cup for that matter - was for their Big Three (Dilshan, Sangakkara and Jayawardene) to score 300+ runs on their own, and then for their popgun bowling attack to hold their opponents to less than that. Today, that was executed to perfection against an opponent that once again showed its own limitations.

Bangladesh probably needed to bat first to exert any influence on their opponents. They certainly needed to do better than give Thirimanne so many lives. He was dropped fourth ball of the innings (a sitter to first slip), edged to the right of gully, then between the keeper and first slip, and again to gully, all in the first ten overs. Then a simple stumping chance was missed when he was on 44. Five real chances in all, in an innings of 52. He was not dismissed until the 25th over and the score on 122. If he had been picked up earlier, the whole match may have changed.

Why? Because Sangakkara would have entered to a completely different match. Instead, with Dilshan blazing on 63 not out... Sangakkara simply took over. On 25, he was dropped in a caught and bowled chance to Taskin. Oh dear, how costly. Even then, the game could have been saved if the simple chance he gave to Mominul at point when he was on 60 had been taken. But no. In the same over Dilshan raised his century. By the end of the innings he had crashed his way to 161 off 146, with Sangakkara scoring 106 off 76 deliveries. 115 came from the last ten overs. It was the most costly way to show the importance of taking all of your chances. With 1/332 in the bank, the game was over.

To complete this debacle, Tamim Iqbal was bowled by Malinga second ball of the innings, in such a way that it lifted the whole team. The innings never recovered, and though they eventually reached a total of 240 through some solid innings from Al Hasan, Rahim and Rahman, there was never a time that it looked as though they could push for victory.

Sri Lanka now take on England this Sunday in a game that could push them to 2nd in Group A depending on the result of the Australia vs New Zealand match on Saturday, while Bangladesh will be thankful for their drawn match against Australia last Saturday, going into their match with Scotland next Thursday which they must win if they want to still be in with a chance of reaching the quarter final stage.