Dilshan's 96 sees Sri Lanka to finals

Sri Lanka avoided going the South African way and reserved their place in the finals of the ICC World T20 by getting the better of West Indies in the second semi-finals at the Oval thanks a sparkling inning of 96 by T.Dilshan and an amazing first over by Angelo Matthews.

West Indies won the toss and elected to field first because they had been winning games in the tournament doing just that. However, they seemed to be done in by some exhilarating batting display by Dilshan, who in partnership with a rusty-looking Sanath Jayasuriya added 73 runs for the first wickets in ten overs. Dwayne Bravo finally ended Jayasriya’s misery when he had the man caught by Jerome Taylor, and pushed the Lankans deeper into it by getting rid of Kumar Sangakkara in the same over for a duck. And when Kieron Pollard dismissed the previous game’s star Mahela Jayawardene for a brace, the Lankans looked like they will struggle with a middle-order that hasn’t had a great tournament so far.
However, Dilshan counter-attacked like he had in the Indian Premier League and smashed the bowlers all around the park as Chamara Silva kept rotating the strike at the other end. The fourth wicket stand was an all-important one that yielded fifty runs, out of which, Silva scored only 11, before Suleiman Benn had him caught by the wicket-keeper. Dilshan completed his fifty in the meantime and the manner in which he kept cutting and pulling away the bowlers, it looked like a century was on cards for him.

Bravo’s 17th over was hit for three successive boundaries by Dilshan, while Chris Gayle’s final over went for 18 runs. Dilshan was on 94 when the last delivery was bowled, but could manage only a couple off the last to end on an unbeaten 96 that had come off only 54 deliveries and consisted of 12 hits to the fence. This knock, not only propelled Dilshan to the top of the most-run getters standing but also at the pinnacle of the ‘most boundaries hit’ list.
The very first over in West Indies’ reply broke their back. Xavier Marshall, opening the innings in place of Andre Fletcher was bowled by Angelo Mathews for a duck and it was a procession after that. The fourth and the sixth delivery of the same over saw both Lendl Simmons and Dwayne Bravo, getting dismissed for blobs to leave the men in maroon at 1/3 and in deep trouble.

A 42-run stand between Gayle and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul ensued, out of which the latter contributed only seven, but his wicket to a sweep off Ajantha Mendis saw the start of a collapse for the West Indies. The remaining seven wickets fell for 58 runs, with none of the players other than Gayle getting to double-digits. Gayle remained unusually calm in his unbeaten inning of 63 that gave an entirely different picture of how the pitch was behaving from when his other team-mates batted.

Dilshan’s ravaging knock earned him the Man-of-the-Match award.