Yesterday's match, which was as big as a quarter-final of the world cup, unfortunately turned out to be a soporific encounter dominated by Sri Lanka. Playing at the Premadasa, the pitch and the game both turned Sri Lanka's way. England enjoyed a fair share of luck by winning the toss which is vital at the Premadasa. Batting first was their best chance to make a match out of it, and honestly speaking, they did not play too bad. Of course, they struggled against spin. Not that they did not put up a fight while batting but they simply lacked any talent to tackle quality spin. None of the Englishmen seemed confident picking any of the three spinners that Sri Lanka were armoured with. Jonathan Trott's fine 86 and Eoin Morgan's fortunate 50 helped England to reach a decent total of 229.
It was not impossible to defend 229 but considering England's impotent bowling attack we all thought it would be tough. And it indeed was. It proved to be so tough for England that they did not manage to pick even a single Sri Lankan wicket. Sri Lanka's road to victory was no tougher than a walk around a park. Dilshan and Tharanga both scored unbeaten hundreds and took Sri Lanka to the target with 63 balls to spare and 10 wickets in hand.
In my opinion, there was nothing spectacular about the match. Not the Lankan spin. Not even the 2 hundreds by their openers. The English inning looked like an elongated struggle and the Sri Lankan batting, although the scorecard suggested otherwise, lacked any flamboyance whatsoever. Not that they did not play well. They were dominating right since the beginning but it's just that the Lankans are not exciting to watch in my opinion.
The docile English attack looked simply incapable of making a mark on the slow pitch of Colombo. And that's why the teams seemed to have batted on two different pitches. England endured a seemingly endless struggle against spin to reach 229 for 6 in 50 overs whereas the Sri Lankans chased down the target with all their wickets in tact in 39.3 overs.
This was the story of the 4th and the last quarter-final which, by all means, turned out to be a dull match to watch and a walkover for Sri Lanka. This was also the end of a media-hyped and sensationalized English world cup campaign that, unlike some of its previous versions, did entertain us most of the time but failed to leave a lasting impression on the cup of glory.
Man of the Match: Tilakratne Dilshan
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