A day to forget for South Africa

South Africa had one of those days today that they will quickly want to banish from their minds. For Sri Lanka on the other hand, it was further confirmation that they are back to their brilliant best, after being thoroughly outclassed by Pakistan in the recent test series.

On a hot and humid day in Colombo, Sri Lanka maintained their unbeaten run in this Singer Triangular, defeating South Africa by 8 wickets, with a staggering 22.3 overs remaining. They did so thanks to a woefully inept batting performance by the Proteas, and a quite exhilarating innings by Avishka Gunawardena, who scored 87 runs off just 76 balls.

Such was the severity of South Africa's defeat that they will now have to beat Pakistan tomorrow to be sure of qualifying for the final on Friday. Pakistan, who had resigned themselves to elimination, now have a glimmer of hope, the difference in net run rate having now been narrowed. Pakistan now have a net run rate of -0.43 and South Africa are marginally ahead on -0.89.

The small crowd that came to watch this one-day international will vividly remember the batting of Avishka Gunwardena for many days to come. The 23 year old has his distracters, who grumble that he is too loose and careless, but not many of them would like to bowl to him in his present form.

A man of immense strength, his handshake is like a meat cleaver and his arms are like pistons, who is naturally self-confident, he has always batted in the same manner and is adamant that he always will. For him, cricket is a simple game: it doesn't matter who the bowler is nor the match situation, a bad ball is a bad ball, and simply must be hit to the boundary, the harder the better.

In fact by his normal standards he started unusually slowly this afternoon, waiting for the 3rd over until he cut loose. Undeterred by the fact that his captain had just skied a catch to Makhaya Ntini at mid-on, he smashed Pollock through both the on and off-side, to pick up consecutive boundaries.

His appetite now whetted he couldn't resist an onslaught on the out of form Mornantau Hayward, who had to be withdrawn from the attack after his first two overs cost 26 runs. After the first five overs Sri Lanka had raced to 41-1, 31 of which were from the blade of Gunawardena. He hit 16 boundaries his innings, all of which were hit with immense power.

Marvan Attapattu (44) just looked on from the non-strikers end. Content to give Gunawardena as much of the strike as possible, he just nurdled the ball into the gaps to start with, before becoming more expansive after the dismissal of Gunawardena, who tried to cut a delivery from Boje that was too full and was adjudged LBW.

Once again the South African bowlers were guilty of bowling both sides of the wicket and Graham Ford, the South African manager, has clearly got a lot of work to do over the next few days.

Graham Ford would of course be happier if he needed to address only one aspect of his team's game, but unfortunately on the evidence of today, some serious attention will have to be given to the middle order.

Speaking afterwards he said: "It was a very disappointing performance today, I think we were very anxious to have good day today and to cement our place in the final. Perhaps we were a little too anxious. Trying to get off to a quick start we got ourselves into trouble with a few soft dismissals."

Surprisingly South Africa opted to open with Lance Klusner (0). The justification given was the desire for early runs before the spinning quartet of Muralitharan, Dharmasena, Chandana and Jayasurya could get to work on an unusually dry SSC pitch.

However Gary Kirsten (3) and Andrew Hall (32) have not put a foot wrong so far on the tour and have scored their runs at a good pace. Furthermore the first 10 overs of a match at the SCC traditionally tends to favour the bowlers: hence Sanath Jayasuriya's decision to bowl first when he won the toss.

In the event Lance Klusner was dismissed off his first delivery, caught at cover off Pramodya Wickramesinghe's first delivery in an international match for over four months. Gary Kirsten followed soon after: bowled off his pads by Nuwan Zoysa in the third over of the day.

Jacques Kallis (83*) and Andrew Hall (32) reacted to the loss of early wickets in emphatic fashion. Jacques Kallis even had the audacity to sweep Pramodya Wickramesinghe for six, and then in the same over, charged the bowler to drive him for six over extra cover.

Andrew Hall followed the example of his more experienced partner and he too played in an aggressive manner. Unfortunately for South Africa, he was rather too eager assert himself against the spinners, sweeping his first delivery from Kumar Dharmsena straight down the throat of Mahela Jayawardena.

Jonty Rhodes (5) and Darrel Cullinan (8) then proceeded to make matters much worse than they should have been, by running themselves out. Not that Jacques Kallis was entirely blameless.

When Upul Chandana replaced Kumar Dharamsena, he quickly accounted for Mark Boucher, who was defeated in the flight and drove straight to short extra, and Shaun Pollock, who was plumb LBW three balls later.

Nico Boje (19) hung around for a while with Jacques Kallis, but what South Africa really needed when the seventh wicket fell for just 110, was a cameo from Lance Klusner. Alas he was already sitting on the dressing room, his batting equipment already returned to his coffin.

South Africa will quickly have to re-group for tomorrows match, a game that had been expected to be meaningless but now has been given some extra spice.