Asia Cup: India is the winner of Sri Lanka’s spin magic enter the final
In Asia Cup last night’s thrilling match held at the Premadasa Stadium, India entered the final by beating Sri Lanka by 41 runs in the magic of spin. India gave a brave performance in this exciting match. India, who won the toss and went into bat, Sri Lanka took the first 10 wickets with their spin magic and restricted India to 213 (49.1) runs and became the upper hand.
After that in second session, India tied Sri Lanka for 172 (41.3) with its sharp pace and spin bowling and won with a brave reply. India won the final berth with four points after winning two matches in a row in Super Fours and got the final berth. With this, Bangladesh left the tournament.
So India is into the final. Bangladesh is out. The race is there for the other two teams to join them. The tournament takes a day’s break now. We will be back day after for all the action as the Asia Cup resumes. Till then eat, rest and be well. See you!
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Dunith Wellalage | Player of the Match: First of all I want to congratulate the Indian team. They have so many experienced players but unfortunately we lost the game but we have another game and we want to put up a good fight. Kuldeep is a great bowler, I tried to play my normal game with a positive mindset. I want to thank my team-mates and my coaching staff – they gave me great support.
Rohit Sharma | Indian captain: Was a good game. For us also to play a game like that under pressure on a slightly challenging pitch. Challenging in a lot of aspects. Definitely looking to play on pitches like this to see what we can achieve, we might as well come here and play on pitches like these. [on Hardik] He has worked really hard in his bowling for the last couple of years.
It doesn’t happen overnight and it’s pleasing to see. He looked like taking a wicket off every ball. Was not an easy target to defend as the pitch got easier at the end and we had to put it consistently in one area and I think we did quite well. [on Kuldeep] For the past year or so bowling really really well. He has done a lot of hard work on his rhythm. He went back to the drawing board and worked on it. The ball is coming out nicely and you can see the results in the last 10 ODIs.
Dasun Shanaka | Sri Lanka captain: We didn’t expect this kind of wicket, I thought it was a batting wicket but we adjusted well, especially Wellalage, DDS and Asalanka. The luxury of two genuine batters, they have been bowling in the nets and I know their real potential, today I had the option of using them today. Seeing the last game against Bangladesh I knew he (Wellalage) would do something special today, he took Kohli’s wicket and I was pretty sure it was his day and will take a couple more wickets.
KL Rahul: It was amazing, we were tested throughout. We were not on the field for 100 overs but how many ever overs we were there it tested us physically, great to see we turned up today and gave it our best. We turned up and that is a big tick mark for us as a team. Always happy when I contribute to the team, when you are batting in the middle order it is important to build partnerships.
I have been out for 4-5 months, I will take anything that comes, it was a crucial partnership with Kishan. Third day in a row playing at the same vene, bit of spin but we managed it really well, we were 20-30 runs short, few more partnerships could have got us to 230-240. When you are behind the stumps, you have a good idea as to what the batter is doing and I just passed on the message, luckily it worked for Kuldeep (referring to his tip to Kuldeep before Samarawickrama’s dismissal).
