ICC Battle For Supremacy
Sri Lanka v South Africa
Match Two, Colombo
Great Start Ruined!
Nuwan Kulasekara bowled the first ball of the innings and straight away the ball swung away from Gibbs, and had to be given a wide. This set the tone, the ball swung and seamed quite a lot during the first 5 overs of play, the opening pair of Malinga and Kulasekara were deemed unplayable by the batsmen! Apart from a top edge that went for six over point, not many runs were scored during this period.
After the first few overs, Gibbs decided he had to go for it. They were going nowhere with their scoring and the run rate was suffering. He targeted Kulasekara, and was successful at it. He hit a crisp cover drive followed by a mammoth six over square leg. Kulasekara was put under the pump now as boundaries were being played of his bowling from both batsmen. While at the other end Malinga was restricting the batsmen to 3 runs per over at the most.
After one over going for more than 15 runs, Sangakkara was forced to take Kulasekara off. He brought Murali into the attack in the 8th over of the game to try and restrict the runs scored. Just the one boundary came off that over; a thick edge too fine for the third man to chase. He bowled just the one over and was taken off, the pitch wasn?t quite turning just yet and there was no point in wasting your premier spinner?s overs.
After the economical opening spell Malinga was also taken off and Mathews was bought into the attack early to try and harness these perfect conditions for swing bowling. The bowling change worked as his nagging line and length brought about the end of Smith. He got one to swing in late and it was as plumb as you can get; Smith was out after making a promising start for 10 runs of 19 balls.
Sangakkara was making the wildest bowling decisions, he decided to bring Mahela Jayawardene into the attack in the 10th over. At this stage the game was evenly poised with South Africa on 44/1, another wicket and the game would swing Sri Lanka?s way but another big over for South Africa and they would be on top. Gibbs had been held down for too long, he had a look at the scoreboard and noticed he had faced 43 balls and made only 27 runs. This over was his chance to score big.
In came Mahela with his medium pacers, he bowled a gentle loosener way outside offstump and to everyones surprise Gibbs smashed it straight to coverpoint! Mahela and the rest of the Sri Lankan team were ecstatic; they just removed the danger man. Gibbs stared at the pitch suggesting as if the ball had stopped on him, but he had to go.
His wagon wheel shows that, runs were coming in boundaries but he faced alot of balls too.
Sri Lanka are well and truly on top after taking both the set batsmen in the first 10 overs. So with two new batsmen in, South Africa will look to rebuild their innings as it only gets harder from here when the wicket starts to turn. It?s up to the experienced pair of Kallis and de Villiers to stay out there for at least another 20 overs and score at a steady rate if South Africa have a chance of getting to that score of 260.
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I'm hoping to get back on track soon.
