LONDON: Muttiah Muralitharan spit his spinning venom and paralyzed the Pakistani batsmen by luring them to their demise as Sri Lanka registered a 19-run win over Pakistan in the crucial opening Super Eight match of the ICC World Twenty20 here on Friday.
Murali has a unique gift of a wrist and fingers which can put more rotations per second on a cricket ball than any off-spinner has probably ever done. And this came into foray when he dismissed both Misbah and Shahid Afridi in the same over to shift the momentum of the game in his team’s favour.
Misbah played a good shot by pulling Muralitharan crisply but could manage the safe hands of deep midwicket.
Just a ball later the magician showed his experience when he bowled a topspinner to Afridi. The batsman was foxed and could manage just a top-edge to be picked out in deep midwicket again.
Two back-to-back dismissals in the same region- only a magician could have scripted it. The dismissals changed the fortune of Sri Lanka as the Pakistani side could manage just 131 for the loss of nine wickets in their allotted quota of 20 overs.
Muralitharan finished with figures of 4-0-28-2.
The other star bowler for the Lankans was Lasith Malinga who looked at his best as he returned with wicket every time his captain gave him the ball. Malinga finished with impressive figures of 4-0-17-3.
Younis Khan fought and fought hard but running out of partners did him in. The Pakistan captain scored a fighting 50 before top-edging Malinga.
Chasing a modest 150 runs to win the match, Pakistan had early hiccups but the experienced pair of Younis Khan and Misbah ul-Haq came together to stitch a 66-run partnership to bring them back into the game.
Earlier, Sri Lanka opening pair of Sanath Jayasuriya and Tillakaratne Dilshan took the opposition bowlers to the cleaners by sharing an 81-run stand from nine overs before slow bowlers Shahid Afridi and Saeed Ajmal brought Pakistan back into the match.
Sohail Tanvir was wayward in his opening spell of two overs, which ended up with 20 balls being bowled instead of 12.
Sri Lanka were threatening to post a huge total by scoring 86 for one at the half-way mark and 120 for three at the end of the 15th over largely due to the contributions of Jayasuriya (26 off 24 balls) and top scorer Dilshan (46 off 39 balls).
But, once Afridi and Ajmal started bowling in tandem, Sri Lanka found it difficult to find the runs and with the pressure building on they lost wickets in a heap in the death overs.
In fact, Sri Lanka could add just 30 runs from the last five overs while losing four wickets in the process.
For Pakistan, the trio of Afridi, Ajmal and Umar Gul took two wickets apiece conceding 23, 26 and 34 runs respectively.
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