Pakistan vs Sri Lanka 4th ODI: It was Afridi’s Day

 

Afridi single-handedly displayed an impregnable performance both with bat and bowl by winning the Pakistan Sri Lanka series played on the Arab soil. The 4^th ODI out of the five ODI series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka at Sharjah was a treat to watch. After eight years of cricket drought at the Sharjah cricket ground, Pakistan again registered a memorable success over Sri Lanka which lost its last 7 wickets of just 19 runs. The game was almost in the hands of Sri Lanka but Afridi wrecked the lower batting order with a blend of googlies and legbreaks, successfully preyed five wickets for Pakistan. The juggling of Afridi perplexed the Sri Lankan batting where world class batsmen like Mahela Jayawardene and Kumara Sangakkara were unable to withstand the artifice of Shahid Afridi.

Pakistan batted first, struggled early in the game with 6 wickets down on 97. Afridi came at seventh position and played a magnificent inning of 75 runs off 65 balls. It is the first time ever in ODI history that a player has secured a half century and took 5 wickets in one inning twice in his career. Before that this feat was registered 15 times but none of the cricketers has repeated their performance like Shahid Afridi did.

Humaira Asad

Famous cricket player of Sri lanka: Mahela Jayawardene

Born in May 1977, Jayawardene is one of the best cricketers Sri Lankan cricket team has ever produced. He is a right arm batsmen who has such ability and cricketing sense that he can bat at any position from the openers down to the 7^th wicket. Known for his ability to build an innings in pressure situations, Jayawardene has scored more than 9000 runs in ODIs at an average of 32.68.

Jayawardene is one of the best batsmen today in the Srilankan cricket team. The Cricket World Cup 2011 Srilankan squad is considered to be a threat for the other teams due to the presence of class batsmen like Jayawardene and Kumara Sangakkara. Jayawardene is experienced and with his 9000 plus one day international runs, he is the 13^th highest run scorer ever in the history of ODI cricket.

Jayawardene’s debut was in 1998 against Zimbabwe. By now he has played more than 330 matches. He has scored 12 hundreds and 55 fifties in his career so far. His highest score so far in an innings in ODI is 128 while the highest individual score in world cup is 115 against New Zeland in the 2007 Cricket World Cup.  Some critics think that Jayawardene’s statistics do not justify the class he carries which is by far true. His ODI average is below 33 but he has the capacity of building an innings and his sheer determination and skills helped Srilanka in qualifying for the 2007 world cup cricket final.

With 28 centuries and 38 fifties in the Test career, Jayawardene has scored more than 9000 runs in Test cricket as well. His best innings so far was 374 runs, he has scored on the average of above 53 runs per innings in Test Cricket which is a very impressive figure.

ICC World T20: Best middle order batsman to date

Playing almost every single ball will felicity with wristy flicks and cover drives, he is the best  middle order batsman of Srilanka, Mahela Jayawardene who has scored the most half centuries in ICC World T20 tournaments to date. He has scored 5 fifties in 18 matches with a strike rate of 146.77. Srilankan Captain Kumara Sangakkara sometimes refers Jayawardene as a double edged sword. Jayawardene has not only a potential to drive the ball towards covers but also dabs the ball behind the stumps for some bonus runs. He has remained awesome playing against off spinners where he plays the ball will nominal footwork however with excellent timing and placement.

As the 2011 ICC World T20 is on the cards, we hope to see him playing in the tournament with flying colours and registering new records in an array of great batsmen on the T20 vista.

Current Top Five Batsmen of Cricket

Best 5 batsmen present currently

Cricket is a game played by two teams and each team can either bowl or bat a time. Bowling team delivers the balls at the playing batsman and batsman hits the balls to score the runs. In today’s time, the game has become more oriented towards the batting side and there have been many legends who have shown their batting capabilities.

Sachin Tendulkar of India is without doubt a number one batsman in the current world of cricket. He has scored over 30,000 runs in both the forms of cricket (Test and ODI) with 90 centuries and is the best batsman ever.

At the second place comes the current skipper of Sri Lanka, Kumara Sangakkara, who has scored much number of runs with playing the role of wicket-keeper at the fielding time.

Third one is Mohammad Yusuf of Pakistan who has the record of scoring five consecutive centuries and has contributed a lot with to Pakistan Cricket team.

Fourth batsman to be amongst current top five batsmen is Australian Skipper Ricky Ponting who has scored more than eleven thousand runs with 39 centuries in his test career and has always performed as a batsman with his duty of captain.

The last and fifth batsman of the list is Jacques Kallis from South Africa who has scored more than ten-thousand runs in test cricket and has always been a back-bone for South African cricket team.

Sri Lankan Cricket Team – Profile

Profile for Sri Lankan team
Sri Lankan cricket team is a strong cricket team who can put up a fight to win 2011 cricket World Cup. The strength of Sri Lankan cricket team is their batting which is full of batsmen like Tilakratne Dilshan, Kumara Sangakkara and Mahela Jayewardene who are considered to be some of the greatest batsmen of the cricket history. The bowling department is led by a legend off spinner Muthaya Muralitharan who has taken highest wickets in the test cricket history and he has the support of current world’s second ranked bowler Nuwan Kulasekara. They have the vast experience of Sanath Jayasuriya and leadership of Kumara Sangakkara is very effective. They have the bowler like Ajantha Mendis who has recorded fastest 50 wickets in one day internationals.
In spite of having such a good talent, Sri Lanka has failed to achieve results in recent times because of inconsistency of their top players. In recent series against India, Sri Lanka managed to win only one twenty-20 match and single one day international match.
But, Sri Lanka has the record of reaching in the World Cup final of 2007 cricket World Cup and winning the 1996 World Cup behind them. Apart from this, they have the advantage of playing on the home surface in 2011 World Cup. Due to all this factors, they can throw challenges to any team and can win cricket World Cup 2011.