ICC Cricket Champions Trophy 2009 - Match 1 - South Africa Vs Sri Lanka Summary

Match 1: ICC Champions Trophy 2009 Highlights - South Africa (SA) Takes On Sri Lanka (SL) - Group B

Played At: Supersports Park (Centurion)

Team South Africa: Graeme Smith (capt), Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers, 5 JP Duminy, Mark Boucher (wk), Albie Morkel, Roelof van der Merwe, Johan Botha, Wayne Parnell, Dale Steyn. 

Team Sri Lanka: Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara (capt/wk), Mahela Jayawardene, Thilina Kandamby, Thilan Samaraweera, Angelo Mathews, Nuwan Kulasekara, Muttiah Muralitharan, Lasith Malinga, Ajantha Mendis

Toss: South Africa won and chose to field

Sri Lanka Innings: 319/8 (Dilshan 106, Jayawardene 77, Sangakkara 54, Steyn 3/47, Parnell 3/79)

South Africa Innings: 206/7 (Smith 58, Kallis 41, Mendis 3/30) 

Match 1 Result:  Sri Lanka Won By 55 Runs (D/L) 

Player of the Match: TM Dilshan (Sri Lanka)

Jayasuriya Back in Form

Sri Lanka Vs West Indies ( ICC World Twenty20 2009 ) - Sanath Jayasuriya's47-ball 81 and his century stand for the first wicket with Tillakaratne Dilshan propelled Sri Lanka to a 15-run win over the West Indies in an inconsequential Twenty20 World Cup Group C match here today.

With both the sides making it to the Super Eight stage, the match had no bearing on their future in the tournament but Sri Lanka still began in the right earnest.

Put into bat, the Lankans got off to a solid start as openers Jayasuriya and Dilshan (74 off 47 balls) laid the foundation for a huge total before medium-pacer Lendl Simmons (4-19) managed to pull things back a little for the West Indies.

Chasing 193 for victory, West Indies managed 177 for five with Dwayne Bravo (51), Ramnaresh Sarwan (28 not out) and Lendl Simmons (27) shining with the bat even though it was not enough in the end.

West Indies started in a whirlwind fashion as openers Andre Fletcher (13) and Simmons put on 38 runs inside four overs before the former's leg stump was uprooted by a slower full toss from Lasith Malinga.

Undeterred, Simmons carried on, hitting back-to-back fours off Muttiah Muralitharan but his all-round show was brought to an end by the wily off-spinner as the batsman perished at first slip.

Bad Time But Not Affect Ashes confidence: Ponting

Sri Lanka became the second team to beat Australia in three days with a six-wicket triumph at Trent Bridge and Ponting's side have now lost 13 of their 23 Twenty20 clashes.

They must now start preparing for a five-Test series against England starting in Cardiff on July 8.

"It's my job to make sure we get over this pretty quickly and start focusing on the red balls and white clothing over the next couple of months," Ponting told reporters.

"I certainly won't be focusing on the negative stuff that has happened over the last couple of days.

"It's about looking at the positives we have created with our test team over the last few months. I like to think that none of this will linger around.

"Being in England there is no better place to be as the excitement and atmosphere at the start of an Ashes is going to be tremendous and if we can get caught up in that there won't be any negatives hanging around from the last few days."

UNEXPECTED PRACTICE

The Australians' next match is on June 24 against Sussex, so they have 15 days, based mainly in Leicester, to prepare and Ponting said the practice time may yet be an advantage.

"I guess it can't hinder us to have more time with the red balls out and preparing for the longer form of the game, while England play Twenty20 for at least another week so maybe that is one thing we can take from our time at Leicester," Ponting said.

"I've never been a big believer in taking one series to another, particularly when it's different forms of the game. We have a vast changeover of players coming over for the Ashes and when they get here we will build on from the very good stuff we did in South Africa."

Despite his attempts to put a positive spin on Australia's elimination from cricket's premier 20-over event, Ponting did not try to hide from his team's vulnerabilities in that format of the game.

"I would love to be able to tell you what's going wrong as that's five international Twenty20 games we have lost in a row and that's a worrying trend for our team," he added. "We've got some thinking to do there's no doubt about that.

"We will have a chat about where our Twenty20 cricket is at tonight and then we have got to move on from it pretty quickly because we've got some test matches just around the corner and our test team has been our shining light recently."

Australia knocked out of ICC WT20

Sri Lanka Vs Australia ( ICC World Twenty20 2009 ) - Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakara and T.Dilshan played an important role in run chase against Australia to achieve the target of 160 runs with one over to spare and beat them by six wickets. For the first time Australia faces so much early exit from the tournament in a decade.

The win for Sri Lanka confirm their and West Indies berth in the Super Eight Stage.

Chasing the target of 160 runs for victory Sri Lanka got off to flying start with the help of in-form T.Dilshan (53 runs of 32 balls) despite loosing opener Sanath Jayasurya (2 runs of 7 balls) in the third over of an inning. Dilshan and K.Sangakara (55 runs of 42 balls) put on a valuable partnership 62 runs of just 42 deliveries to make the run chase comfortable for other batsman to follow.

However once Dilshan got out Australia did manage to get the match closer to the end overs but in the end it was captain cool Sangakara and Jehan Mubarak (21 runs of 12 balls) achieved the target with an over remaining.

Earlier Australian after put into bat got off to disastrous start loosing opener David Warner in the very first over. However R. Ponting (25 runs of 15 balls) and Shane Watson (22 runs of 21 balls) tried hard to put Australian inning back on track but once spinner introduced into attack they were struggled and kept loosing wickets at regular intervals.

At one stage they were struggling to get pass 150 run mark but thank to M.Johnson (28 runs of 13 balls) and David Hussey (28 runs of 22 balls) innings as they both collected 65 runs in the last five overs of Australian inning.

Kumara Sangakar was declared Man-of-the-Match for his superb unbeaten knock of 55 runs of 42 balls.