One of the biggest partnerships

Well as I have repeatedly mentioned in my previous posts about the presence of weaker teams and their influence on world records, here is yet another one adding to the list with Sri Lanka putting up a first wicket partnership of 282 on the board at Pallekele yesterday. Once again, SriLanka were enjoying the home team advantage and even if they were not, things would have hardly been any different. However, things were not satisfactory for the home team despite the aforesaid record. I just don't have the patience to search for the highest 1^st wicket partnership in world cups.

And even by chance Sri Lanka happen to be the team that boasts fir the highest 1^st wicket partnership of yesterday's match against Zimbabwe, that would hardly go down as the best one day innings be it in world cups or otherwise. Sri Lanka have a long way to go in this world cup and their record or performance so far in this tournament is below satisfactory. They lost their group game against Pakistan by 11 runs despite repeated drop chances by Pakistan and then the match against Australia was abandoned with 30 odd over being possible. Their next important game is scheduled against New Zealand.

Sri Lanka as a matter of fact are yet to win a game against Pakistan in world cups. Though they had an upper hand in the abandoned match against Australia, nothing can be said with 100% confidence for, Australia are also not a down to earth team despite not having the services of Glenn McGrath and co. Coming to the game between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, it would be just a waste of time to cite Sri Lanka's win over the African nation since 1992 when they held the world record for the highest run chase in world cups after chasing down 312 on board.

Since then, forget about Sri Lanka winning over Zimbabwe and instead, Zimbabwe's major victory has been against India and South Africa in the 1999 world cup when they made it to the 2^nd round of a world cup for the first time in the history of Zimbabwean cricket. Sri Lanka's total of 327 was far less compared to the expectation which should have seen them cross 370. The opening partnership stood for 44 overs and since then Sri Lanka lost 6 wickets. Had it not been for the first wicket partnership, may be Sri Lanka-Zimbabwe would have been a close encounter.

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.