India romp to victory in U-19 final

India turned in another good allround performance to beat Sri Lanka by eight wickets in the final of the Afro-Asian Under-19 tournament in Visakhapatnam. It was India's sixth win out of six at the event, underlining their dominance throughout.

Sri Lanka made a good start, reaching 74 for 0 before Man-of-the-Match Piyush Chawla turned the game around with 5 for 24, taking his tournament tally to 15 wickets, as the Sri Lankans eventually limped to 212, with Sameera Soysa top scoring with 47.

India's batting never looked troubled as Gaurav Dhiman blasted 105 off 75 balls, his third hundred of the competition, and aided by 65 not out from Cheteswar Pujara, the win came with 17.3 overs to spare. Dhiman finished with 423 runs at a strike-rate of over 120.

"How many people expected Gaurav to achieve what he did?" India's delighted coach, Venkatesh Prasad, said. "Right now, he is as big a contender for making it big as Piyush. We have set extremely high standards for ourselves in the preparation for the World Cup. And we are sticking to them in terms of performance. Sure, it's huge pressure sometimes for setting such high standards. But that's the way for us to go.''