Poor Sri Lanka

One has to regret the fact that rain spoiled Sri Lanka's chances yesterday at Providence when they would have simply wiped out Zimbabwe from the tournament had the D-L method not come to their rescue. No doubt that Sri Lanka did win that encounter against Zimbabwe but, the introduction of the D-L method made matters worse by denying the viewers a chance to watch out for the bowling of Muralitharan and co. Scorecard suggests that even the Sri Lankan batsmen didn't have an easy going when only Jayawardane 's score of 100 spoke. There were only two other batsmen who scored more than 10 runs.

The second best score in the Sri Lankan innings was Thisara Perera's 23 and the other batsman who could cross the double figure mark was the number 7 batsman Kapugedra who scored 13. There is no doubt over Sri Lanka winning the match whether rain interrupted the game or not. But, looking at the performance of the Sri Lankan batsmen, that should certainly worry them with big games to come in the next week. One cannot find the reason for Jayasuriya making it to the playing XI at number 6. It was just a waste of space having Jayasuriya in at number 6.

Speaking about the bowling or batting of Zimbabwe team would be another waste of time needless to be said. However, a quick glance suggests that the bowling of the Zimbabwean team was pretty decent with runs equally given by all bowlers with Chigumbura being the top run donor when he gave away runs at 10.50 runs an over. The rest of the bowlers maintained almost the same run rate. But the real enemy of the game was rain which almost threatened to abandon the game. Had the match sailed on smoothly, the margin of victory would have been more than 14 runs.

There is nothing much to write about the batting of Zimbabwe otherwise as well and this time the batting has been swallowed by rain forcing the match to be declared to Sri Lanka. However, one thing that was obvious from the match was that the man of the match could have been none other than Mahela Jayawardane who scored a hundred. That was the only highlight of the Sri Lankan innings with no other batsman from Sri Lanka making it count. One thing that needs to be reconsidered for Sri Lanka is their batting and the second one is the inclusion of Sanath Jayasuriya.