After getting beaten brutally by the Indian cricket team in the Tests and ODIs, the Sri Lankans tried to put all their efforts in the one-off T20 held at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo n September 6. The entire home team looked in a different mood as they played fearlessly against India.
Virat Kohli won the toss and invited Upul Tharanga and his men to bat first. The Lankan openers gave the perfect start to the team. Though they kept on losing wickets at regular intervals, the rate of scoring runs never went down in the initial overs. Debutant Dilshan Munaweera was the man who worked as the catalyst in the Lankan batting line-up and punished the Indian bowlers. He came to bat at number 3 after skipper Upul Tharanga was bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and the team was reduced to 23/1. From that point, he started charging hard and scored his maiden T20I fifty in just 26 balls.
The way he was batting, it seemed at one point that the Lankans might cross the 200 mark barrier. But in the 12th over, Chinaman Kuldeep Yadav hunted him down as he got bowled out. The 28-year-old debutant tried to hit the ball so hard that his bat slipped from his hands and flew to square leg. Yadav’s delivery found a way to hit the stumps and Munaweera’s heroic inning came to an end.
Munaveera unusual dismissal #INDvSL #SLvIND pic.twitter.com/XVN9M7oPXM
— ANOOP DEV (@AnoopCricket) September 6, 2017
Munaweera ended up scoring 53 runs off 29 balls which includes 4 sixes and 5 fours. Later, the Lankan tail enders also performed well and posted a giant total of 170 runs on the board after losing 7 wickets in 20 overs.
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