In difficult conditions where the ball swung, seemed, bounced and spun under overcast sky Pakistan prevailed in the end, quite emphatically to beat Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the first one-day international to go 1-0 in the 5 match series.
Inspite of the prevailing conditions, Sri Lanka won the toss and Jayawardene elected to bat first. Against Tanvir’s angle and Umar Gul bounce Sri Lanka’s batsmen struggled. Pakistan conceded far too many extras in the early exchange and still Sri Lanka managed scoring only 41 runs before their fifth wicket went down. Gul took three of those wickets and Sami took two. There was a short rain interruption in the 18th over and Tharanga soon lost his wicket after the players came back on the field. Thirimanne then built the only two partnership of any value in the Sri Lankan innings when he scored 25 runs with Perera and 50 with Kulasekara for the sixth and seventh wicket respectively. There were more rain interruptions in the 24th over. Finally with the number of overs reduced to 42 as Sri Lanka got to 135.
Chasing 136 from 42 overs was never going to be difficult but Pakistan were playing with one batsmen less and soon they found themselves down 2 wickets with only 27 on the board. But steady and measured innings by Hafeez, Misbah and Akmal ensured that Pakistan got the target without much hiccup.
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