Skipper Tillakaratne Dilshan’s masterclass with the bat and the collective bowling effort from Rangana Herath, Sanath Jayasuriya and Nuwan Kulasekara guided Sri Lanka Legends to a comprehensive 9-wicket win over South Africa Legends in the 8th match of Road Safety World Series worked off today at Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Raipur.
Sri Lanka Legends’ skipper Tillakaratne Dilshan won the toss for the second consecutive time in the tournament and elected to bowl first with the gained confidence of chasing down the target against West Indies Legends in the last game.
Loots Bosman and Alviro Petersen opened the innings for South Africa but they got off to the worse possible start as Peterson ran himself out in the very first ball of the game for a duck.
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The right-arm seamer Nuwan Kulasekara then showed that he could still move the new ball as he bowled Bosman for no run with an in-swinging delivery. Kulasekara’s bowling partner Dhammika Prasad then joined the party dismissing the South African wicketkeeper-batsman Morne van Wyk for 2 runs thanks to an excellent catch taken by Malinda Warnapura at deep third man.
South Africa was going nowhere with the bat as they continued to lose wickets at regular intervals and eventually bowled out for just 89 runs in 18.5 overs. The only significant contributor with the bat for South Africa was Andrew Puttick who made 39 runs off 45 balls.
Right arm seamer Kulasekara, left-arm spinners Rangana Herath and Sanath Jayasuriya picked up 2 wickets each for Sri Lanka Legends.
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Chasing a well below par score of 90 runs to win, Sri Lanka lost the opening batsman Sanath Jayasuriya early in the innings for 8 runs in the third over. However, the skipper Dilshan and number three batsman Upul Tharanga managed to put Sri Lanka over the line building an unbeaten 69-run partnership for the second wicket.
Dilshan top-scored with 50 runs off 40 balls including 7 fours while Tharanga made 27 runs off 31 balls with 5 fours.
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Sri Lanka Legends will meet Bangladesh Legends in their next encounter which will be held on 10th March at the same venue.
Brief Scores
South Africa Legends 89 (18.5) Andrew Puttick 39, Zander de Bruyn 15, Rangana Herath 2/11, Nuwan Kulasekara 2/13, Sanath Jayasuriya 2/24
Sri Lanka Legends 92/1 (13.2) Tillakaratne Dilshan 50*, Upul Tharanga 27*, Garnett Kuger 1/23
Result – Sri Lanka Legends won by 9 wickets
