June 25, 2010

India clinch the Asia Cup for the 5th time

Yesterday, India bagged the Asia Cup for the 5th time in the history. India played Srilanka in the finals at Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium, Rangiri. India won the toss & elected to bat first.

Gautam Gambhir & Dinesh Karthik opened the innings for India. Gautam Gambhir did not stay for longer period as he got run out in the very first delivery of the 7th over. After the fall of first wicket, all the top order batsmen did their job well & contributed very good runs which helped India to put up a good total on board. India by 50 completing the 50 overs, it had put up a total of 268 runs loosing 6 wickets. Top scorer for India was Dinesh Karthik who scored 66 runs from 84 deliveries which included 9 fours. Muttiah Muralidharan was the most economical bowler from Srilankan side. His economical rate was just 3.4 runs per over & did not pick any wickets.

Now, Srilankans wanted 269 runs in total to clinch the Asia Cup. Upul Tharanga & Tillakaratne Dilshan opened the innings for Srilanka. Dilshan returned to pavilion in the very 5th delivery of the 1st over itself. Srilankans started to loose wickets in very regular intervals. Things went very worse, when they lost Jayawardena, Mathews & Sangakkara when Srilanka had scored just 50 odd runs. Kandamby & Kapugedara was the last hope for Srilanka as they both have the tendency to bat till the end. In-fact they both played well but did not put up a strong partnership. By 44.4 overs, Srilanka lost all its 10 wickets scoring 187 runs. India thereby won the match by 81 runs. India won the Asia cup for the 5th time.Praveen Kumar & Harbhajan Singh were the most economical bowlers for India.

No comments: