Sri Lanka became the first team to qualify for the finals of the T20 World Cup after beating Pakistan by 16 runs. Winning the toss Sri Lanka elected to bat first which was quite a wise decision because the normal trend of all the teams has been to bat first. The starting was pretty decent although the scoring rate was slow. The home team lost their first wicket when they were 63. The captain led from the front as he scored 42 of 36 balls. Dilshan too played a handy innings as he supported Jayawardene very well. Sangakkara went early scoring 18. Altogether it was a safe innings from the Sri Lankan team as they did not lose too many wickets up front. The Pakistan bowlers did well to restrict the home team to a rather easy total of 139 after 20 overs.
Pakistan in response started pretty well with Mohammad Hafeez playing a captain’s knock scoring 42 runs. But Pakistan could not capitalize on the good start as they lost wickets in the middle and gave away too many dot balls in the middle overs. That gave Sri Lanka to bounce back and Pakistan was suddenly in a spot of bother with the required run rate going up. Herath was the pick of the bowlers from Sri Lanka picking up 3 wickets in his spell. Malinga was unlucky as he did not get any wicket but bowled an amazing spell especially in the depth overs. Pakistan’s innings ended with just 123 runs on board.