ICC World Cup: Sri Lanka thrashes England by eight wickets at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru
In the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, Sri Lanka thrashed England by eight wickets at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru this evening. Chasing a paltry target of 157 runs set by defending champions England, Sri Lanka secured victory in just 25.4 overs for the loss of two wickets. For Sri Lanka, Pathum Nissanka was the top scorer with 77 runs off 83 balls.
Earlier, batting first, England were bundled out for 156 runs as Sri Lanka struck at regular intervals. For England, Ben Stokes made 43 runs while Jonny Bairstow scored 30 runs. For Sri Lanka, Lahiru Kumara scalped three wickets while Kasun Rajitha and Angelo Mathews claimed two wickets each.
This was England’s fourth loss in five matches. With this win, Sri Lanka has four points in five matches while England has two points from the only win against Bangladesh. England will now meet India next on October 29 at Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow.
In another chapter of the ever increasing set of surprise results in this World Cup, Sri Lanka hammered England by eight wickets in Bangalore on Thursday (October 26). A one-sided result wasn’t totally unexpected but it was a role-reversal of sorts as the defending champions crashed to their fourth defeat of the tournament, leaving their title defence on the ropes.
Technically, it isn’t an upset, given that Sri Lanka had been winning this duel since the previous four editions. The game was done at the halfway mark itself once England collapsed to a low total of 156 after opting to bat. From there on, it was only a matter of Sri Lanka holding their nerves and they did that quite well.
David Willey did ignite a glimmer of hope in the English camp with his twin strikes in the first Powerplay. The left-arm pacer got rid of Kusal Perera and Kusal Mendis to put some pressure on Sri Lanka. However, Pathum Nissanka and Sadeera Samarawickrama conjured unbeaten fifties in a 137-run stand to see the side through without further hiccups. With such a low total to defend, it was always going to be an uphill task for the English bowlers on a pitch that got increasingly easier to bat on as the game progressed. The Nissanka-Samarawickrama stand was a masterclass in eye-catching strokeplay as they put the bowling to the sword.
That the target was achieved with approximately half the allotted overs left should tell a story in itself. However, it’s hard to overtly criticize England’s bowlers, given that they barely had any runs to play with. Another batting disaster earlier in the afternoon is what proved critical to England’s fortunes. It’s one thing to know the generic conditions of a venue and quite another to adapt when the tracks at that particular place behave differently. Today’s Chinnaswamy surface wasn’t the usual slam-bang-wallop kind of track where powerhitters usually make merry. The deck was on the slower side and the odd ball did stop a bit too.
England were too late to realise this fact and by then, they had just the tail left. From the get-go, indications were clear that the reigning champions would go hard in their bid to post a big score. Australia in their previous game and South Africa frequently had done this in the tournament. Given England’s explosive brand of cricket, it was a surprise that they hadn’t produced even a single performance of such menace. The batting unit wanted today to be that day where their turnaround started and blindly trusted the Chinnaswamy surface to be their ally. Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t thatkind of a track.
The first five overs of the England innings was the only time in the entire game where they seemed to have some confidence. Dawid Malan stroked a few boundaries upfront, as did Jonny Bairstow but once comeback man Angelo Mathews and Maheesh Theekshana were introduced, the tables turned. The veteran started the fightback with the key breakthrough of Malan and then was influential in the run out of Joe Root as England started to stutter. Theekshana continued to keep it tight while the pace duo of Lahiru Kumara and Kasun Rajitha then sliced through the rest of the English batting line-up. Ben Stokes was the only one to show some resistance but even he lacked his usual tempo. It was the sort of batting implosion that leaves teams with no way back.
Brief scores: England 156 in 33.2 overs (Ben Stokes 43; Lahiru Kumara 3-35, Angelo Mathews 2-14) lost to Sri Lanka 160/2 in 25.4 overs (Pathum Nissanka 77*, Sadeera Samarawickrama 65*) by eight wickets
