Sri Lanka stormed into the semi-finals of the ICC World Cup 2011 with an emphatic 10-wicket win over England at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. Sri Lanka will now meet New Zealand in the first semi-final on Tuesday at the same ground.
England won the toss and elected to bat first. Andrew Strauss (5) scored departed early to the part-time spin of Tillakaratne Dilshan. Ian Bell, promoted to open the innings, scored 25 runs from 32 balls with three fours. At 31/2 from nine overs, England needed a partnership to get back into the game.
Jonathan Trott scored a characteristic 86 runs from 115 balls with just two fours and added 64 runs for the third wicket with Ravi Bopara (31). He also raised 91 runs for the fourth wicket with Eoin Morgan, who made a chancy 50 runs in 55 balls including four fours.
Matt Prior provided the momentum in the slog overs with an undefeated 22 runs from 19 balls to guide England to a below par 230/6 from their allotted 50 overs. For Sri Lanka, Muttiah Muralitharan picked up 2/54 from nine overs while others bowled quite well to restrict the England batsmen.
Chasing at the R Premadasa Stadium has never been easy but the Sri Lankan openers paced their innings quite well to knock off the required runs with all the ten wickets intact and still ten overs left in the game. Tillakaratne Dilshan scored a brilliant 108 runs from 115 balls and hit 10 fours and two sixes. This was Dilshan’s second hundred in this tournament.
Upul Tharanga too was equally good in notching up his second World Cup hundred. He hit an undefeated 102 runs from 122 balls with 12 fours and a six. None of the England bowlers were effective on the evening as the duo added a record 231 runs for the undefeated first wicket. Dilshan was declared the man of the match for this sparkling hundred.