THE two final ironies of the World Cup were these: Sri Lanka, against the state-of-the-art professionals of world cricket, were tactically cuter and altogether more efficient on the big night; and they were fresher and sharper than their distinguished opponents to a considerable extent because those same opponents had refused, albeit for entirely understandable reasons, to play them in the preliminary round.
Although legal repercussions will persist, the bitterness created by the Australian decision not to play in Colombo, and any lingering resentments from Sri Lanka`s tour Down Under, will be forgotten in the afterglow of their stylish, confident and utterly deserved victory over Australia in the sixth World Cup final. That it was really only a small upset is indication of how far and how quickly Sri Lanka have travelled since they were considered one of the two weakest of the nine Test nations.
They won by seven wickets, with 22 balls to spare, a huge margin in limited-overs cricket. Aravinda de Silva followed Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards as only the third man to score a century in a World Cup final and his innings was in the same class as the memorable ones at Lord`s by those great West Indians in 1975 and 1979.
De Silva`s batting has always been touched by genius. Now, on the biggest occasion of his life, he played with quite wonderful judgment too. His 107 not out was scored off only 124 balls but he limited himself to 13 fours and a six. It is not easy for someone who, when the force is with him, can hit any ball almost anywhere he pleases to pace an innings to such perfection.
There could have been no more appropriate opponents than Australia; no more deserving partners in the cool swallowing-up of Australia`s score than the two durable left- handers - Asantha Gurusinha, a stalwart for so long, whose 65 off 99 balls included six fours and an astonishing, bludgeoned six over long-off from Shane Warne, and Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka`s Napoleon.
Sri Lanka`s fortune on the day was limited to the fact that Australia, having lost the toss, were obliged to field and bowl in a foggy dew. The shrewd planning lay in the Sri Lankan decision, by the captain Ranatunga and his advisers, Duleep Mendis and Dav Whatmore, to put Australia in after a practice session under the lights had shown them how soaking wet the outfield would get when the sun set.
Most uncharacteristically, Australia had practised only by day, their coach Bobby Simpson, who usually misses not a single trick, having decided, reasonably enough up to a point, that they had played enough night cricket. Perhaps weariness from two tough games in succession, and two more overall than Sri Lanka, played a part in this potentially fatal decision to leave something to chance.
It was academic in a way because Mark Taylor lost the toss and was given first use of a lovely pitch for batting, but he would have batted anyway if the coin had spun the other way and that would have been as wrong as Azharuddin`s decision to field in the Calcutta semi-final.
Pulling with relish and great power, often to balls barely short of a length, Taylor hit seven fours and a six in his 50 off 52 balls, mainly at the expense of Chaminda Vaas. Although Muralitharan suffered too as the quick-footed Rick Ponting lent his captain ideal support, the game changed from the moment that Taylor swept de Silva to deep backward square leg. Ranatunga read the tealeaves and brought his best slow bowler back, the other spinners supported well and in 25 overs Australia managed a single boundary: this on a quick outfield, despite overnight rain, and with a boundary of no more than 70 yards.
Michael Bevan stayed calm and made what he could from the later overs, but the Sri Lankans know his game inside out, as they do every other Australian`s, and they did not give him room to make more than a couple of those clean strokes over extra cover or the bowler`s head.
Australia in the field were not so tight. They made some brilliant stops, certainly, and their tall fast bowlers, Glenn McGrath and Paul Reiffel, both bowled particularly straight to an ideal length, but there were chances missed and many a fumble on the slippery surface.
Jayasuriya was a little unluckily ruled out by little more than millimetres on the evidence of several inconclusive replays after a fine throw from third man by McGrath and in the same over Kaluwitharana was late on a pull from Damien Fleming.
Sri Lanka won by seven wickets
Umpires: S A Bucknor & D R Shepherd
Man of the match: P A de Silva
Man of the series: S T Jayasuriya
Source :: Electronic Telegraph
The portly 30-year-old, thrown out of the team two years ago because he was considered too fat and unfit, earned his third man-of- the-match award with three wickets, a catch and a world- class 107 not out.
His off-breaks were a major contribution to the victory but it was his coolness under fire, however, which proved the key to Sunday`s final.
The Colombo-born player came in after a jittery Sri Lankan start, two wickets down with only 23 on the board, to play an innings of a lifetime.
Dropped by wicketkeeper Ian Healy off Shane Warne early on, he brushed off the scare to produce an array of masterly strokes.
He calmed down partner Asanka Gurusinha as the pair set about hitting a dispirited Warne, the world`s leading wrist spinner.
The two made 125 before the left-handed Gurusinha finally lost concentration but de Silva continued on his way with a mix of caution and soft-wristed artistry alongside his captain Arjuna Ranatunga.
De Silva is making a habit of innings of a lifetime. He made 145 against Kenya, there were 91 runs against Zimbabwe and 66 against India in a match-winning semi-final innings.
Sunday`s effort, however, was for a world title. De Silva, himself known for wild rushes of impetuosity, could not have been more surgical. "It was my duty as a senior player," he said.
His century on Sunday took his tournament total to 448 runs, at an average of just under 90 a visit, to confirm the Sri Lankan as the best number four in the world.
Result: Sri Lanka won by 7wkts
Man of the match: Aravinda de Silva
Source:: Daily News (http://www.lanka.net)
Just no team has won a World Cup final batting second. The Grandmaster Arjuna Ranatunga`s men were chasing by choice and made all their dreams come true as they defied the history of World Cups, the emerging tradition of the floodlit limited-overs game and, perhaps, the form book while also breaking the jinx on host teams.
Their portly skipper who loves to play the game as if by moves on a chess board chose to rely on his team`s strengths which lie in the batting that can be particularly spectacular in the face of a known target. He was masterly in his handling of the middle overs. By shuffling his spinners around quickly in the face of an onslaught by his counterpart Mark Taylor, he found a key card in his deputy de Silva whose off spin had bite today and whose catching had flashes of inspiration. Such creativity was also to be seen in Aravinda`s batting this night in which, of course, he was simply carrying on from the semi-final in which he fashioned his team`s win with a dominant innings which was as effective as it was aesthetically pleasing and would have stood scrutiny in any form of the game. Here, his greatest threat was his in- discreet choice of singles early in his innings through which he could have been dismissed a few times had only the Aussies hit the stumps.
Aravinda`s assault on the bowling was a flashy show of authority in which the strokes flowed on as if from a deep well of originality. Not even cricket managers with their subjectivity could have got this wrong as Aravinda`s three wickets, two catches and his innings, also the highest by a Sri Lankan against Australia in a World Cup, made him the automatic, if only choice for the match award. No man could have done more to fulfil the ambitions and desire of so many on the emerald isle in the Indian Ocean.
His partner in the clinical destruction of the bowling despite the cheap loss of the openers was Asanka Gurusinha who could not have refound his touch at a more appropriate time though he did need considerable help from the Australian fielders who were un- characteristically butter-fingered. The two were able to sustain a level of aggression which mocked the asking rate of 4.84 on a night on which their batting was resplendent in its concept and positive in execution.
The crowd which kept swelling through a long day at the Gadaffi Stadium was solidly behind the last of the joint hosts left in the competition and in that too the Lankans had defied history by becoming the first hosts to be victorious even if they did win only at a neutral venue in Pakistan`s ancient city. Despite the recent background of some hostility, there was no sign of any ill feelings between the two teams as they played in a perfectly friendly atmosphere.
Ranatunga & Co. may have been peeved at the organisers playing the South African national anthem instead of the `Namo Namo Matha` of Sri Lanka at the simple match opening ceremony. But long before such a faux pas in a World Cup of many a slip in organisa- tion had occurred, the skipper had chosen to insert the opposi- tion. For whatever reasons he did so, he may have been pleasantly surprised at the purchase his spinners got from a pitch which had been hiding under three layers of covers until the rain cleared this afternoon.
An Australian innings poised to climb on Taylor`s aggression and Ponting`s anchoring role was nipped in the middle game by the spinners who received so much encouragement from a captain who is an adept at running a positive operation with such bowling with moist imaginative field placements. So choked were the Aussies by spin and that their hits could reach the boundary only thrice in the last 26 overs.
The Aussies had a fighting total rather than a massive one and the calm ways of de Silva were just what the islanders needed to get over a rash of over enthusiastic running between the wickets and get down to the more sensible process of meeting the target by creating the runs with the bat. His touch of class was the match-tilting contribution with bat and ball and the Lankans were lucky that he found his real batting touch at the very end of the competition in his two innings in the semi-final and final in the manner of Inzamam-ul-Haq in the last edition of this extravaganza.
The astrologer who told Ranatunga he would win the World Cup must be chuckling with delight in Colombo while one Subramanyam in Visakhapatnam who predicted this Australia-Sri Lanka final must be feeling very pleased, too, even if he was somewhat non- committal about the result.
But then he was talking to the Australian journalist Mike Coward a month ago and he may not have wished to reveal what he saw in the crystal ball or foresaw in the stars.
Whether their win was indicated in the stars or not, their batting depth on the ground came in handy though no victory in a final was going to come on a platter. The threat of Warne had to be seen off and that was done by Gurusinha who pulled him to long on and flat batted him from off the back foot for a huge six over long off. That danger became virtually non-existent from that point on but then the Aussies Fleming at long on and Law at deep mid wicket put Gurusinha down and paid the penalty since the match was sealed pretty soon; so well was the pair picking the gaps until Gurusinha (99 balls, 6x4, 1x6) gave Reiffel the charge.
There were to be no late show of nerves in the proximity to victory as Ranatunga used his steady hand and nerve to play the dib and dab game in support of Aravinda, who got to his century off 119 balls with his 12th boundary, until the golden moment came. And then there were silken drives of his deputy which kissed the turf as it sped through covers and past mid wicket when the time came to step up the pace and seal a win which could not have come to a more deserving set of individuals led by the inspirational Ranatunga who has that distinct air of solidity about him.
It is not often that Taylor gives the impression that he is at home in the limited-overs game. The stage which was the focus of the world may have inspired him and he used that vicious pull of his to punish anything that was a fraction short. He did not lose his tempo though Mark Waugh had quite early on clipped one off his legs to who else but Jayasuriya who has this knack of always being in the right place for a catch. This is an art in which he was upstaged only by de Silva.
The field patterns were fascinating and the bowling was generally aimed towards containment when de Silva became the trump card. Taylor, so much in command on the on side but looking just a shade shaky on the square cut which he tended to hit in the air, was ironically to perish on the leg side. He top edged a sweep and who should be there to take it at long leg than Jayasuriya who just made it to the ball as it was dipping away from him.
De Silva was jubilant as he turned that ball into the middle stump to beat Ponting who was aiming for the back cut. The Tasmanian`s problem had been his pre-commitment to play the spinners off the front foot. He was bottled up by the kind of dip, almost unnatural, that Muralitharan was getting and with the boundary hits drying up none between the 16th and 24th overs and then none again until the slog when Law pulled Dharmasena for six in the 43rd Ponting was bound to innovate and he fell.
The game had changed in complexion. And by a bowler who is a non-regular and yet useful enough to be considered a one-day all-rounder. When the pinch hitter Warne was stumped down the leg side to give the economical Muralitharan his only wicket, he was so clearly out that Bucknor may have been wondering why ever he asked for the replay. The loss of the wicket was nothing but the game had changed.
The Lankan supporters` stand had been silent while Taylor (83 balls, 8x4, 1x6) and Ponting (45 off 73 balls) put on their century stand during which there was such a promise that if the late middle order played to its reputation the score could be gigantic. To put in the opposition was a gamble Ranatunga may have been prepared to take despite such shortening of the boundary as to make one wonder whether this was befitting of a World Cup final.
It would, however, have been a logistical nightmare for everyone if this were to spill into any of two reserve days marked for the biggest event in the cricket calendar. The keenness was to be seen in the manner in which the ropes were nailed in several yards in front of the hoardings making some parts of the boundary just 65 yards from the wicket to leave the wettest parts out of play.
By the time Steve Waugh spooned one up off the leading edge for de Silva to come in himself from long on to sort out who would attempt the long running catch, the crowd was solidly behind Sri Lanka. The Pakistanis were shouting "Sri Lanka Zindabad" in one voice and the Lankan bands found the strength of their fingers again. And no one had done more to transform the state of this innings than de Silva who caught everything besides providing the most vital breaks.
The one man who could provide a fighting total even after this middle order slump was Michael Bevan (36 off 49 balls) who is simply the best hitter in the death in the contemporary game. He steered and he drove and he cut from outside leg stump and did just about everything else to pull the innings up to the mid- level respectability of 241.
Ranatunga would have been happy his side was chasing only so many and not more but in the first hour or so even the Grandmaster must have been wondering whether his gamble at the toss was indeed the right thing to do.
Source :: The Hindu