The visiting England Lions players managed to give a strong reply against Sri Lanka ‘A’ team at the Galle International Cricket Stadium yesterday (08th) by displaying faster batting than in an ODI match. In response to the 332 runs scored by Sri Lanka ‘A’ team for the first innings, they managed to collect 234 runs for the loss of 3 wickets and for that they had spent only 35 overs.
At the end of the day, the England Lions players, who had batted at a rate of 6.68 runs per over, were 98 runs behind Sri Lanka’s first innings and had seven more wickets in hand. In most of the fast batting launched for the England Lions team, Isilu No. 05 batsman Jamie Smith scored an unbeaten 86 off 56 balls, which included 10 fours and 5 sixes for that innings.
Jamie Smith‘s batting was so fast that the England team got 38 runs in the last two overs before the end of the match. Lakshitha Manasinghe scored 19 runs in the 34th over and Chamika Karunaratne scored another 19 runs in the last over. Smith, who hit three fours and one six off Manasinghe’s bowling, managed to hit two sixes and one four off Chamika Karunaratne’s bowling.
The England batsmen scored 54 runs against Lakshita Manasinghe, who bowled only five overs against the England team. England Lions opener Alex Lees defended his end till the end of the day and scored an unbeaten 75 runs. The number of fours added to Lees’s innings, which lasted 82 balls, was 8.
Chamika Karunaratne managed to get captain Haseeb Hameed the first wicket of the England Lions team in the second ball of the match. Then Vishwa Fernando took the wicket of Tom Able for four runs and the scoreboard of the tourists was 17 runs with the loss of two wickets.
After joining the field, Jose Bonaman led the England scoreboard with the opening batsman Alex Lees, and when Vishwa Fernando succeeded in knocking Bonaman out for 54 runs, the relationship between the two was limited to 105 runs. On the previous day when the match was stopped, Sri Lanka ‘A’ team, who had scored 190 runs with the loss of three wickets, brought the scoreboard up to 211 runs with the loss of three wickets. But the remaining 7 wickets fell just within the next 121 runs.
Among them, the centurion Lasith Croospulle was dismissed for 128 runs and the captain Nipun Dhananjaya scored 61 runs. As the last batsman, Lakshita Manasinghe scored 43 runs and Lasith Amudeniya scored 42 runs and contributed to Sri Lanka’s innings crossing the 300-run mark. (Divaina)
Get more sports news and information by connecting with Buzzer.lk and Buzzer Sports.
