Garth Wattley
In Port of Spain
Surely, it would be asking too much for West Indies and Sri Lanka to produce a repeat of the thrilling finale to Thursday’s first match of the Digicel One-day International series.
But the full house expected today to witness the second instalment of the three-match rubber will be greedily hoping for similar thrills and a similar result.
For the West Indies team though, just a win will do.
The magnificence of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, coming up with a four and six off the final two balls of the match from Chaminda Vaas to snatch victory will hardly be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
Coach John Dyson paid tribute to Chanderpaul’s effort yesterday saying: “ He showed just why he’s such a highly rated player around the world. Fantastic finish by—I saw in the paper today—a genius player.”
But both Dyson and his captain Chris Gayle would have been just as happy to have won without needing such heroics.
“I would have preferred to win the game, probably around the 45th, 46th over,” Dyson said yesterday. “But in the end, we won the game and that’s very pleasing. We won.”
Having called correctly at the toss and inserted Sri Lanka, Gayle saw Man-of-the-Match Dwayne Bravo record career-best ODI figures of four for 32 as the visitors were reduced initially to 49 for five. But a Sri Lanka record sixth wicket partnership of 159 between Chamara Kupagedera (95) and Chamara Silva (67) took the visitors to a competitive 235.
And despite at one stage being 109 for one, the West Indies again found themselves unable to sustain their grip on the game. Until Chanderpaul’s final intervention.
“One-nil up, we not going to take it for granted. We still have a lot of work to do and we still have a lot of communication to do as well,” captain Gayle said on Thursday.
Gayle’s counterpart Mahela Jayawardene is also keen to see improvement from his side.
“Quite a few things we need to get right,” he said after the defeat. “But we can take a lot of positives out of this game and definitely looking forward to the one on Saturday.”
One of the “positives” for Sri Lanka besides the work of Kaugedera and Silva, was the impressive debut of spin talent Ajantha Mendis whose three wickets on debut and his impressive array of deliveries—off and leg breaks and googlies—delivered with the control of a Muttiah Muralitharan, nearly won the match for Sri Lanka.
“He’s something special…We only saw him about one year back. He didn’t have that much control, but the last year, he’s started bowling really well,” enthused Jayawardene about the new find.
“He looked like a seasoned pro the way he handled himself. It was really good to see that.”
The West Indian batsmen should get another searching examination from Mendis today.
With the visitors being able to use him in mid-innings, the toss could be the key to this game, with the seamers of the side bowling first also seeming to have the advantage early on.
The home team will wait to finalise their final XI.
“We’ve had a look at the wicket this morning and we’ll wait until tomorrow morning until we see the final preparation and what it looks like and what the weather conditions are like before we make any decisions on the team that will play tomorrow,” said Dyson.
The heavy cloud cover over the past week could also play a part in the outcome of today’s contest.
And a rain affected match would not only be a disappointment for the fans.
Dyson wants to see his side keep the momentum developed by their back-to-back victories in the Second Test and First ODI.
“It’s great that we’ve had two games that the boys have been pushed fairly hard in and they’ve come out on top,” the Windies coach said.
“In the tour of South Africa we had some games where we were in winning positions but weren’t able to actually get over the line.”
He added: “It will be fantastic to win here tomorrow. But from my point of view, we should approach every game that it’s just as important as any other game and attempt to win it.
“If we won tomorrow and we go two-up, we approach St Lucia with the point of view that we try and clean sweep the series.”
Teams:
West Indies from: Chris Gayle (Capt), Devon Smith, Sewnarine Chattergoon, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Bravo, Runako Morton, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin, Patrick Browne, Darren Sammy, Sulieman Benn, Fidel Edwards, Jerome Taylor, Daren Powell.
Sri Lanka from: Mahela Jayawardene (Capt), Upul Tharanga, Mahela Udawatte, Kumar Sangakkara, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Chamara Silva, Chamara Kapugedera, Nuwan Kulasekara, Ajantha Mendis, Chaminda Vaas, Kaushalya Weeraratne, Ishara Amerasinghe, Thilan Thushara, Malinga Bandara.
