World Cup 2015 Match 22 Sri Lanka v England review: Big win for Sri Lanka

World Cup 2015 Match 22 Sri Lanka v England review: Big win for Sri Lanka: The match between Sri Lanka and England was supposed to be cracker of a match with two evenly match sides going against each other. England needed a much needed win to be in the World Cup, while a win for Sri Lanka meant that they would more or less qualify for the knock out stage. Read the review of the match to know what happened.

England won the toss and decided to bat first on the Wellington pitch. Moeen Ali (19) and Ian Bell (49) gave them a pretty good start, while making runs at a decent run rate. England lost Ali and Gary Balance in quick succession, but then Joe Root and Eoin Morgan (27) and then Joe Root and James Taylor (25) made partnerships of 60 and 98 respectively. But England kept losing wickets regularly. Though every single bowler Sri Lanka used kept England under pressure except Suranga Lakmal, each of them picked a wicket. Joe Root became the youngest English batsman to hit a century in World Cup cricket. Thanks to some last minute hitting by Jos Buttler (39) England made 309/6 in 50 overs. Joe Root made 121 off 108 balls.  Every bowler Sri Lanka used picked up a wicket and Dilshan taking 1/35 off his 8.2 overs.

When Sri Lanka came into bat, England would have hoped that James Anderson and Stuart Broad would give them early breaks and take some wickets in first 10-12 overs. Well that didn’t happen since the first Sri Lankan wicket fell in the 18th over on the score at 100 runs and Dilshan had made 44 of those before getting out to Moeen Ali. Sri Lanka’s batting proved to be more than effective against English bowling. Lahiru  Thirimanne and Kumar Sangakkara than started to pick apart the English bowling, bowler by bowler. Both of them dominated the English bowlers whether it was Anderson, Finn, Broad or Woakes. Every one of them went for runs apart from Anderson and all of them failed to take another wicket or break their partnership. Thirimanne and Sangakkara added an unbeaten 212 runs for the second wicket.

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Thirimanne scored 139* off 143 balls with 13 fours and 2 sixes while Kumar Sangakkara remained not out on 117 off 86 balls with 11 fours and 2 sixes. Tillakaratne Dilshan made 44 runs before he was dismissed by Ali via a good catch by Morgan. Sri Lanka won the match by 9 wickets in hand and now is second in the Group A table behind New Zealand. England on other hand has just won 1 match and are probably on their way out of the World cup.

Kumar Sangakkara won the Man of the Match for his 117*.

Brief Scores:
England 309/6 (J Root 121,I Bell 49; T Dilshan 1/35) lost to Sri Lanka 312/1 47.2 overs (L Thirimanne 139*,K Sangakkara 117*; M Ali 1/50) by 9 wickets remaining and 16 balls in hand.

Match Trivia:
# Sri Lanka are the 1st team in WC history to chase down a target of 300+ loss of just 1 wkt & the 2nd after India (v Aus 2013) in ODIs.
# Lahiru Thirimanne (25y 174d) is also the youngest from Sri Lanka to score a century in World Cup matches.
# K Sangakkara 1234* runs in WC matches, he has become the 3rd most runs getter in WC history, behind SRT 2278 & Ponting 1743.
# England 309/6 – this is exactly the 500th innings of 300+ total of ODI history. India (84) reach the mark most often.
# England now have lost 9 ODI after score 300+ batting first, the most number of such defeats for any team in ODI history.