Sanath Jayasuriya and Mahela Jayawardene: Power, grace and glory
Sri Lanka won the Coca-Cola Cup beating India by a mammoth margin of 121
runs in the final match played at the R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo on
Sunday. They had gone into the final match under some pressure having lost
the previous two encounters against India in the tournament. Sanath
Jayasuriya won the crucial toss, elected to bat first on a pitch that was a
beauty for batting.
Jayasuriya led from the front and went about his natural game, striking the
ball cleanly through the off side with his usual élan. Sri Lanka galloped
to 71/1 in 11 overs and in the process of took the match away from the
Indians. They lost their second wicket in the 16th over with the score on
100, when Marvan Atapattu (5) spooned an easy catch to Ganguly.
The launch had been made on a solid foundation and more work had to be done
to consolidate the position. Jayasuriya was threatening to rip apart the
bowling and was joined by the stylish Jayawardene in the middle. Runs
flowed against the part time bowling of Ganguly, Shewag and Yuvraj Singh.
Jayasuriya was lucky to survive when Zaheer Khan completely misjudged a
catch at the long off fence, off the bowling of Yuvraj Singh. The two
senior batsmen of the Sri Lanka team added fifty runs in 9.5 overs to keep
the scoreboard ticking at a good pace.
Jayawardene was more circumspect in gathering his runs; he flicked a
sweetly timed boundary through the on side off the bowling of Zaheer Khan;
that magical flick of the wrists, which is synonymous with batsmen from the
subcontinent. Jayasuriya smacked one from Ganguly through point for a four
to make things interesting in the middle.
The highlight of the partnership was the electric running between the
wickets. They stole singles and twos even to the best of the Indian
fielders like Reetinder Singh Sodhi. Jayasuriya who had problems earlier in
the tournament was a different man in the final, communicating well with
his to partner. The understanding between Jayawardene and Jayasuriya was
there to be seen; there were just four boundaries scored in the 104 run
third wicket partnership.
The Sri Lankan 200 as well as the hundred run partnership for the third
wicket was brought up in the 35th over. In the last ball of the over
Jayasuriya trying to get to his century played at a ball from Shewag a bit
too early and spooned an easy catch to Ganguly at short mid-wicket.
Jayasuriya made 99 glorious runs off 104 balls with the help of 11 stunning
boundaries.
The third wicket partnership between Jayasuriya and Jayawardene yielded 104
runs for Sri Lanka in 19.4 overs. The sheer volume of runs they scored in
the middle literally took the game away from the Indians. There was no
other partnership in the match that would have qualified for the top most
position, hence the honours of the Five Star Partnership of the match go to
Jayasuriya and Jayawardene.
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