Srilanka Beat

Sports Nite Live Special: Cricket, Football and Formula One!

Saturday September 15, 2007
Gary Spped is furious (and very red) after a late challenge on Nafti. Nafti went to ground rather easily on that play and Speed is booked for his trouble.

West Ham look to have their match with Middlesbrough wrapped up in 5 minutes after a Lee Bowyer goal just after the restart and an own goal by Luke Young in the 51st minute.

Sunderland have doubled their lead at home, thanks to a Ross Wallace goal in the 51st minute.

The seond half has kicked off at the various stadiums but it is at St Andrews that the action is end-to-end, 'keeper bothering stuff.

A boundary settles it as Jayawardene places the delivery past the fielders to Third man. It's 168-3 and Sri Lanka wins by seven wickets with 7 balls remaining.

Jayasuriya is out, but it really is just academic as both teams have qualified for the next stage. Silva now has the job of coming on and finishing off the Kiwis. Sri Lanka 162-3. They just need 3 runs to win.

t was an absolutely extraordinary night at the Kingsmead in Durban.

You can go around the world and you can watch a lot of cricket and suddenly a day like that comes along and you ask yourself….have I ever seen anything like this before?

First of all, with the problem of the damp conditions, India’s innings was played out in wonderful conditions for the seamers.

You don’t see that too often in Twenty20 cricket and Mohammad Asif used the conditions beautifully and had India rocking at 36 for 4.

It was very high quality seam bowling and then the rain arrived and India kept going in and out, and in between Robin Uthappa made 50 off 39.

But the fact that India notched up 141 for 7 is down to MS Dhoni who made 33 from 31.

A couple of guy’s played little cameos at the end, Irfan Pathan made 20 from 15 balls with couple of big sixes, whilst Ajit Agarkar made 14 from 9 balls.

India looked set to past the 130-35 mark that would help them with their net run rate, in comparison to Scotland.

At 141 for 9, if India were thinking only about qualifying, they were being little conservative.

Because when the Indian bowlers came out they discovered that the ball was doing quite a bit for them as well.

RP Singh bowled a good first spell, Agarkar bowled a very good first couple of overs as well, and they picked up the wicket of Salman Butt and Imran Nazir.

Then there were a couple of run outs, with Younis Khan also out, Pakistan were struggling. At that point of time it looked like India were home and dry.

In the last three overs however, Pakistan started their come back. Misbah-ul-Haq made an excellent 53 from 36, whilst Yasir Arafat got a few big hits towards the end.

The scores were level with two balls to go but somehow Misbah-ul-Haq managed not to get a single from them. Cue bowl-out.

Virender Sehwag bowled straight for India, as did Harbhajan Singh and Uthappah. And to the Pakistan fans’ dismay, Arafat, Umar Gul and Shahid Afridi all missed and India won by a football scoreline: 3-0.

So, India and Pakistan are through to the Super 8s. It’s just reward for the thrilling game under lights at Kingsmead.