The return of Dilshan's midas touch

Mohammad Amir has had a habit of landing his very first ball at the very last spot a batsman wants it. A week ago, he nearly took out Rohit Sharma with a searing yorker. Tonight he pinned Dinesh Chandimal's front pad with a full and fierce inswinger even as the batsman was barely ready to play a shot. The lbw appeal was shot down on height. The final ball of the over was a wide half-volley and Chandimal bashed it through cover. Usually, bowlers tend to err at the start of their spell and then slowly gather rhythm, in Amir's case, it was all spectacularly topsy-turvy.

Shahid Afridi decided to bowl himself in the Powerplay and Tillakaratne Dilshan top-edged the fourth ball of the fifth over towards short fine leg. It was all perfectly set up for an early wicket, except the fielder was Mohammad Irfan, and it all went comically wrong. He ran forwards when the ball was comfortably sailing over him, then came the frantic change in direction and finally a desperate lunge with his hands. All to no avail. Afridi, who had been watching this precarious sequence, was buckled over with his hands on his knees, as if he felt the entire weight of the criticism back home about his captaincy suddenly and squarely on his shoulders.

With pundits clamoring that his hand-eye coordination has left him, the 39-year old Dilshan offered his humble reply by reverse-scooping Amir to the boundary. It didn't seem premeditated either. He'd gone down only after the ball had been released - perhaps because it was the 19th over and runs took precedence over wickets - kept his eyes on the ball and his head perfectly still before those magic wrists gave the ball just enough power to beat short third man.

Three balls after that outrageous shot, Dilshan went for a slog across the line and outside edge flew to deep third man. Once again Irfan was in the wrong place at the wrong time and this time, he couldn't even get two hands to a relatively simple catch. Meanwhile, Amir, the bowler, was wringing his hands in anger. Perhaps the memory of that incident was still fresh on Amir's mind as he became party to another fielding mishap off the very next ball. Dilshan pushed the penultimate ball of the over to mid-off, but Wahab Riaz slipped on the outfield in his haste to stop the ball beating him. Amir cautioned his fellow left-arm quick not to throw, and so Wahab took his time to stand up and just stare at his team-mates. Dilshan decided to take advantage of Pakistan taking some impromptu downtime and stole a second run.

He was dropped twice; given easy runs; played the shot of the tournament against the bowler of the tournament, so why not try his luck with the ball? Chandimal, Sri Lanka's stand-in captain, brought Dilshan on in the eighth over and it began with a short ball that Sharjeel Khan - who had spanked four beautiful, back-to-back fours off fast bowler Dushmantha Chameera - plopped straight to Chamara Kapugedera at long-on.