Pakistan's batting helps Sri Lanka enter final
Mahela Jayawardene's men will now face either Australia or West Indies for title honours.
he two Umars in the Pakistani side were at both ends, for the final six
balls of the first 2012 World T20 semi-final. One of them removed their
helmets to play Nuwan Kulasekara. A move both brave and pointless, for
he missed. When he put it back on, Umar Akmal needed to get 21 runs off
the last two. He managed four, and there ended his tournament. But he
wasn’t the only one to blame, for the Men-in-Green losing their third
consecutive World Cup semi-final across two coloured formats.
When the chase began, Malinga and Kulasekara were bowling slower deliveries, and this managed to keep Mohammad Hafeez and Imran Nazir
quiet for a while. It was clear that the demons inside the batsmen were
bigger than the demons on the pitch, and when Imran Nazir played onto
his stumps, his nerves were to blame, more than the bounce that Ajantha Mendis manage to extract from the track. Nasir Jamshed however was unlucky.
The left-handed Virat Kohli,
if we are allowed to use the blasphemous comparison, failed to make
contact with the ball, which pitched outside the leg-stump before
hitting the pads. Umpire Rod Tucker considered only the second. Pakistan
55/2, and that blow cracked the dam open. First Kamran Akmal with a hideous shot, and then Shoaib Malik
with a shoddy forward defense. Their only consolation was Mohammed
Hafeez’s presence at the crease, but he too was living on borrowed time,
after Lasith Malinga butter- fingered a simple chance at long on.
But
the Professor failed to learn his lesson, by getting himself stumped
off Rangana Herath, thanks to a wild swing, away from the ball. Then Shahid Afridi
came and left in the time, that a human being takes to breathe. Six
wickets is one foot in the grave, and however hard Umar Akmal tried to
delay proceedings, he was only delaying the inevitable. The target was
growing on them, and the Sri Lankans were making sure that the
Pakistanis tied themselves in knots, by hitting within the ropes. It
worked.
At the toss, the coin told Mahela Jayawardene
that his luck was on the money, and he in turn told the mike that he
would bat. Pakistan entrusted the opening responsibilities to two left
armers, at opposite ends of the same trade- pacer Sohail Tanvir and
spinner Raza Hasan. Bowling off the wrong foot, the former got an edge
from Dilshan, but Kamran Akmal’s one-handed dive wasn’t good enough.
Openers Jayawardene and Dilshan understood that there was turn and
bounce in the pitch, and in an effort to improvise, the Lankan skipper
manage to pick up some bounty from the boundary, by utilising his weaker
hand to play the pull and sweep in reverse.
But when he tried
the shot that his batting partner is well known for, Jayawardene only
managed to scoop the ball to Raza Hasan at short fine leg. Shahid Afridi
celebrated like an umpire signalling a six, minus the stiffness and
with a lot more emotion. Replacement Kumar Sangakkara oozed oodles of
style in the three fours that he struck, before he got his timing wrong
at about ten minutes to eight, with the ball in Shoaib Malik’s palms at
long on. Sri Lanka’s skippers in the 2012 World T20, back in the
dressing room, backs taking the shape of a chair.
Triple figures
came up with a single off the last ball of the fifteenth over. Enter
Umar Gul, bowling for the first time in the match to Jeevan Mendis.
Every time the bat touched the ball, there were two runs, and this
happened thrice. The pitch was making sure, that this contest would be a
fair battle between bat and ball. Gul was doing better without the new
ball in his right hand, but robbed himself of a wicket, after
over-stepping, before trapping Mendis leg-before-wicket. He made amends
by using the yorker against Dilshan, with umpire Taufel satisfied with
both the lbw appeal and the delivery stride. That Dilshan was having an
off-day at office, was for all to see.
Mendis took his own
batting life at the crease, by coming down the track, to give Akmal and
Ajmal their one and only dismissal of the match. Thisara Perera was keen
to get a move on, using his ‘left foot out of the way’ stance to add
two boundaries to the one that Angelo Mathews had procured with an
edge. Important. For the last over was Sri Lanka’s best, 16 runs coming
off it, the difference between the two teams in this game.
