World Cup Qualifiers: Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe by 9 wickets to secure World Cup spot
Sri Lanka players during the match (Source: @OfficialSLC)
Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe by nine wickets in the Super Six stage of the World Cup Qualifiers and booked a ticket for the main event. The 2023 World Cup is scheduled to be held in India from October 5.
Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to field first. The Asian Lions soon brought the hosts to their knees as Zimbabwe lost their first three wickets for just 30 runs. They could never recover from that position and kept losing wickets at the regular interval. Sean Williams (56) and Sikandar Raza (31) although added 68 runs for the fourth wicket but Zimbabwe eventually got out for 165.
Sri Lankan spinner Maheesh Theekshana took four wickets for 25 runs and became the Man of the Match for his performance. Apart from him, Dilshan Madushanka took three wickets, Matheesha Pathirana took two and skipper Dasun Shanaka chipped in with one.
Chasing 166 was never a big task for Sri Lanka as Pathum Nissanka and Dimuth Karunaratne added 103 runs inside 20 overs. Nissanka went on to score his century and remained not out on 101 while Karunaratne and Kusal Mendis scored 30 and 25, respectively.
Sri Lanka won the game by nine wickets with almost 17 overs to spare. Sri Lanka skipper Shanaka was all praise for his team after securing the World Cup spot and said that they want to play 'as hardest as they can.'
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"To be honest, these bunch of players, they have got their own skill, and they utilised the conditions really well over here. We stick to our basics whatever the condition, whatever the situation is. We want to play the hardest as much as we can. That is what's important," said Shanaka at the post-match presentation.
Losing captain Craig Ervine, meanwhile, lamented the early wickets and Theekshana's middle overs' choke for the loss.
"Those first three wickets put us on the back foot. I think that the partnership between Raza and Williams got us slowly back into the game, and then Theekshana came on...unfortunately, we couldn't recover from that collapse in the middle order," said Ervine after the match.
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