The cloudy skyline and the cold weather are never easy for Sub continent teams .
Today at the Basin Reserve, Sri Lanka was completely outplayed by New Zealand, and the one day lung opener was one-sided. Hence, the spectators at the venue and television viewers around the world would have to cope with the predictable result, which is not exciting.
Put into bat the Kiwi seam cordon consisting of Mat Henry. O’Brouke, Jacob Duffy, and Nathen Smith simply hit the right areas and curtailed the Sri Lankan batters scoring options from the get-go.
Avishka Fernando made 56 Janith Liyanage 36, the only two top order batters who looked composed whilst the failure of the top and middle order gave a clear indication that Sri Lankan batters are vulnerable against quality seam and bounce period.
Wanindu Hasaranga is a bowling all-rounder and with the softer ball, he got a few bonus runs, throwing his bat from his leg stump to make a valuable 35, showing his off and middle stump to the bowler, indicating that 90 percent of his strokes are off side based.
Chamindu Wickramasinghe made 22 but this is a lower order effort that is temporary against quality seam.
Sri Lanka bowled out in the 44th over for 178 runs was an effort far below par.
Experts from the com box indicated that this pitch looked a 320 run surface, so the total Sri Lanka accumulated to defend a Strong Kiwi batting line up was way below par
Matt Henry 4 for 19, Jacob Duffy 2 for 39, Nathen Smith 2 for 43 had a field day with the ball dictating terms to the hapless Sri Lankan top order.
New Zealand reached the target in the 27th over for the loss of one wicket.
Rachin Ravindra made 45 , whilst Will Young made an unbeaten 90 whilst Mark Chapman made 29 .
None of the Sri Lankan bowlers threatened the top 3 Kiwi batters, Hasaranga went wicketless for 29 runs in 6 overs. Sri Lanka looked below par in all three departments of the game, hence plenty of work must be done before the second game schedules to be played at 6.30 am on the 7th of January.
