Dilshan seals a crushing win! Clipped off his pads to square leg and fitting Dilshan does the honours and Sri Lanka are 3-1 up and cannot lose the series
Sri Lanka vs South Africa, 4th ODI at Kandy, Jul 28 2013 - Ball by Ball Commentary
Presentation:
Dilshan is the Man of the Match: "I took a lot of confidence from my bowling. Amla's wicket was very important for us, and we bowled really well after that. The plan was to see off the first few overs, rotate strike and then take chances. Scoring 30s and 40s no point for me or the team."
AB: "No doubt we were 30 runs short. Great knock there by JP. Middle order didn't get going. The pitch turned a bit more today. Credit to Sanga and Dilshan. I asked JP what he thought about the lbw appeal against Sanga and he didn't look confident, thought it was missing leg. The boys have fought hard. I thought de Kock handled himself well so far."
Mathews: "Was a bit worried after I lost the toss, they started well. We did well to hold them back. We wanted to keep them to under 250. I wanted to use Mendis more at the latter part when the wicket has been slower. Not sure if we will experiment in the final game. We would want to beat them 4-1."
That's it from us here. Thanks for your company. More reading material on this game coming up from Andrew Fernando. We'll see you soon. Cheers!
End of match: 238 was thought of as a challenging score at the break, but the seniors, Sanga and Dilshan made it seem as if SA were at least 50 short. A lot went wrong for South Africa in both innings. They couldn't sneak in early wickets like they did the last match, and normally, when Dilshan bats through, Sri Lanka are relatively safe. Perhaps today would have been good to send in either Thirimanne or Chandimal at No.3, but for the sake of closing out the series, they went with the experienced and in-form Sanga. They can do so for the final game, which is a dead rubber.
Leehar: "Still, you can see what South Africa have been missing. Brought Amla back, the start improved. Bring Kallis back and stability will come into the middle order. Bring Steyn in, and the killer instinct will come in for the Bowlers. All the ingredients are there, just need to make the right recipe."
fires this one short down the leg side and he swivels and pulls to fine leg
fires this one wide outside the off stump and Thirimanne doesn't offer a shot
this was fractionally short and he pulled in front of square, the fielder just pulls back before the rope, the umpire checks
full on the pads and he clips this one to square leg
everything going Dilshan's way, not too short to pull and yet he gets an inside edge that sneaks past the stumps
defends forward and we have a maiden over in the midst of the carnage
opportunity there, he dropped this shorter and Thirimanne rocked back and ended up punching to short cover
quicker one and comes forward and defends
shapes to cut but finds point
gets forward and drives straight to mid-off
quicker delivery and he gets forward and defends
gets one to straighten and beat the outside edge, too bad Morkel didn't bowl too many of those today
stays back and punches it to the off side
he strays wide down the leg side
Fantastic series so far for Sanga, In line for the Man of the Series
we won't see twin hundreds today! Morkel pitched it up further and Sangakkara went on his knee to smash it straight, gets a top edge and Kleinveldt runs to his left from mid-off and takes the catch
too wide outside off and penalised
91 now, length ball outside off and Sanga thuds it down the ground down to long-off
Sanga makes room and walks across his stumps and unfortunately for him it strikes the pad and rolls to the on side
his intent is clear, Morkel bowls length outside off, mid-off is up, Sanga makes room and smacks it over the off side and down to wide long-on