Sri Lanka settle early World Cup jitters with a comfortable win over Namibia

 

Sri Lanka have breezed past Namibia to start their T20 World Cup campaign on a winning note. It was their bowlers who set up the victory and despite early jitters in the chase, their batters completed the job with not much pressure in the chase. Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Avishka Fernando were exceptional with the bat making the job easy for the team as they won the game by seven wickets.

Earlier, Sri Lanka did well to restrict Namibia after opting to bowl first. Maheesh Theekshana was brilliant in his opening spell as the opposition batters were not able to read him at all. Both the openers Stephan Baard and Zane Green departed without doing much as Namibia struggled in the powerplay overs. Experienced players Craig Williams and skipper Gerard Erasmus then rebuilt the innings.

But the duo batted slowly adding 39 runs for the third wicket in almost seven overs. The pressure got to them eventually in the 13th over with Erasmus getting out to Lahiru Kumara. This triggered a collapse as they lost their last eight wickets for just 28 runs in a space of 43 balls.

None of the Namibia batters could stick around to take the team to a respectable total. The likes of Kumara, Wanindu Hasaranga and other bowlers didn’t let the opposition off the hook at any stage. Namibia were bundled out for just 96 runs in 19.3 overs with Theekshana returning with the figures of 3/24 while Kumara stayed true to his potential conceding only nine runs while scalping a couple in 3.3 overs.

A comfortable chase for Sri Lanka

The 97-run chase was never going to trouble Sri Lanka but Namibia put up an early fight with the ball in hand. Ruben Trumpelmann was the first bowler to strike as he snaffled the dangerous Kusal Perera in the second over of the innings. Bernard Scholtz and JJ Smit then made things interesting sending back Pathum Nissanka and Dinesh Chandimal to leave Sri Lanka reeling at 26/3 in the sixth over.

Namibia, at this stage, might have thought of repeating what Scotland did the other night against Bangladesh. But Rajapaksa and Fernando made sure there were no hiccups. The duo settled the nerves in the dressing room with an unbeaten 74-run stand to take Sri Lanka over the line in the 14th over itself. Rajapaksa was the enforcer smashing 42 off 27 balls while Fernando played a calm hand of 30 off 28 balls.

Source Crictracker