Fans React as Zimbabwe Stun Sri Lanka to Seal Statement Chase

It was Zimbabwe’s bowling that pulled Sri Lanka back from a flying start to limit them to 178. And it was Zimbabwe’s openers, led by Bennett, the fastest scorer in T20I history, who anchored the innings before the remaining three batsmen, Raza, Burl, and Marumani, carried the team to victory on their second-highest successful T20I chase.

This was exemplified in Sri Lanka’s innings. They scored 54 runs in the first 29 balls of their innings without losing a wicket, before going through a rough patch and losing 4 wickets for 82 runs in 72 balls. They finished with 42 runs from 3 wickets in the last 19 balls of their innings. For Zimbabwe, Bennett had 63 runs off 48 balls, and the other three managed to contribute 102 runs from 64 balls. Raza was instrumental in this chase as he contributed 45 runs (off 26 balls) after the required run rate had gone above 11.

Pathum Nissanka began very quickly after just completing 100 runs to help win his team’s last game, and then began this game with a lot of energy due to opening the score with Kusal Perera. Together with Kusal Mendis, they had brought Sri Lanka to 50 runs after just 5 overs. The bowlers for Zimbabwe attempted to negate their quickness by bowling 2 overs of spin, which they had not primarily done in the first 4 overs; however, Raza and Wellington Masakadza did not deliver the accurate or fearsome bowling that some of the other, more established spinners did.

Zimbabwe Pull Things Back

The dynamics of the match shifted after Blessing Muzarabani dismissed Perera with a slower short ball almost at the end of the fifth over. Kusal Mendis played a poor innings with no real intent, 14 runs off 20 balls, while Nissanka surpassed him as Sri Lanka’s all-time leading run-scorer in T20Is. Kusal was out bowled after straying outside of off-stump to a brilliant leg break delivery from Burl after Sri Lanka had made 100-2 at 12.1 overs.

As even Pavan Rathnayake was struggling to score when he first came in, Nissanka tried to attack Graeme Cremer on the reverse sweep, but he got out for 36, while Cremer took two wickets, and his second was Kamindu Mendis via an easy push back to the bowler.

Sri Lanka could not get off to a good start with Rathnayake getting 44 runs off 25 balls. He hit the first six of the innings in the last ball of the 17th over, and then he hit the second six of the innings in the last ball of the 19th over off Brad Evans. Wellalage scored 14 runs off the last ball of the last over of batting.

When Sri Lanka chose to bat after winning the coin toss against Raza, he believed that it was a win-win for him. He expected that the conditions would improve as the temperature dropped and the lights came on at night. The start of the innings was a different story from what Raza expected; after three overs, there were only 20 runs on the board.

Wellalage’s final over was bowled well to allow 13 runs to be made off the last two, while Hemantha got Raza caught at extra cover off a short delivery from a bad shot by Raza. Zimbabwe was now looking at batters that had little or no experience in this tournament to that stage. Tashinga Musekwiya did not bat well in his first opportunity, scoring 1 run from 2 balls faced. With ten runs still required from the final over, Tony Munyonga, who was previously known only for 2 excellent catches in the tournament, went to Theekshana and hit a six, to settle Zimbabwe down and allow Bennett to score the winning runs.

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