 The first day of the World Cup warm-up games saw Sri Lanka, West Indies
and Bangladesh cruise to easy wins in their respective games. Sri Lanka crushed
Netherlands in a game at SSC in Colombo, West Indies ran home in a reasonably
tough game against Kenya while Bangladesh pounded the Canada side to take
home a lot of confidence before the start of the World Cup.
Sri Lanka batted first against Netherlands and scored a whopping 351 in their
50 overs. This was mainly possible due to an innings of substance from T Dilshan
(78) and because of the valuable support that he got from the other half century-scorers
in the team. Thilan Samaraweera, promoted to the number three position got a
60, while Chamara Silva and Chamara apugedera scored 54 and 50 respectively.
Strangely enough, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene did not bat
in the game.
In reply, Netherlands did not have any chance of crossing over the line and
looked deflated from the very beginning. They lost wickets at regular intervals
and collapsed to 37/4 at one stage before being rescued by the captain of the
day - Bas Zuiderent and Tom de Grooth. Zuiderent made 38 while Grooth scored
76 as the side was taken to a relative position of safety, ending with 195 all
out. Dilhara Fernando ran through the tail and ended with a haul of four wickets.
In another game of the World Cup warm-ups, West Indies took on Kenya
at the SSC in Colombo. West Indies batted first and after the early trouble
that they were in at 65/4, were propelled to a decent total by Ramnaresh Sarwan. Sarwan made a century and ended on 123 off 125 balls while his partnership
with Dwayne Bravo (54) ensured that the side had had a decent 253/8 in the 50
overs.
Kenya did have a good enough start to their innings and were 98/1 at one stage.
Unfortunately for them, they had used up many overs to get there and in the
quest to quell the mounting asking rate, the side was bowled out for 192. Andre
Russell bagged four wickets.
In the third game of the day, Canada were bowled out for 112 batting first
at Chittagong. Shakib al Hasan had three wickets to his name before Tamim
Iqbal raced off to a fantastic 69 to push the side to a nine-wicket win over
the Canadians.
|
