India Enters Asia Cricket Cup Final
article written by krishna.
Top Order Indian entered the final of the Asia cup by defeating Sri Lanka with six wickets remaining in hand. India chased down the target of 309 with 19 balls to spare, after loosing four wickets, exhibiting their batting prowess to perfection with their top order firing in unison to score an easy 6-wicket win over Sri Lanka. Both the openers, Virender Sehwag (42) and Gautam Gambhir (68) gave a flying start putting on 92 runs from 70 balls. Sri Lanka’s inexperienced bowling attack could not stop their free flow. Sri Lanka suffered for resting both the frontlines bowlers — veteran Chaminda Vaas and the prodigious Ajantha Mendis. Both the openers kept the asking rate always lower than the required rate of 6.18 per over.
Middle Order After them it was Raina and Skipper Dhoni who took the charge. Raina cashed the opportunity provided by fate when he was dropped on 11 and made 54 runs. Dhoni kept his nerves held and scored 67 runs. He fell to Muralitharan clean bowled in 38th over. Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma played with cool heads and the target was reached with 3.1 overs in hand. Yuvraj scored the winning runs.
Sri Lanka Everything happened as the Sri Lankans wanted to-they won the toss, took first strike, and put up a big total on the board but at the end their total of 308 runs proved to be too small for the strong Indian Bating line-up. Though they played in a controlled manner and had reached 217 for 3 but their lower order batsmen could not perform well and they lost wickets at regular intervals. They scored 308 runs for eight with half centuries from Chamara Kapugedera (75), Captain Mahela Jayawardene (50) and Chamara Silva (50).Sri Lanka’s hopes to score quick runs in the final overs and post a big total dashed in 46th over when Silva’s got run out after reaching his 50.
Improvements Though no Lankan could dominate beyond a point, bowlers still conceded many and fielders also dropped catches. Both these fields of the game have worried the Indians a lot in the past also and they should be more careful about them when they will be playing in the final of the Asia Cup against the same side.
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