Dasun Shanaka led Sri Lanka trimmed the wings of a high flying Namibia to begin their T20 World Cup campaign with a thumping victory. Coming into the tournament Sri Lanka were expected to fall in tough competition in the group of death, but this emphatic win suggests that they will have no hiccups while entering the Super 12s.
Chasing a modest total of 97 runs, the infamous Sri Lankan batting order faltered early on and were reduced to 26 for three inside the powerplay, however, the target was just not big enough to put them in panic mode.
Avishka Fernando and Bhanuka Rajapaksa saw them through the tough phases and accelerated in the later stages to win the game in just 13.3 overs. Rajapaksa starred in the chase scoring 42 off just 27 balls while Fernando scored 30 off 28.
Namibia tried eight bowlers on the night but only Ruben Trumpelmann, JJ Smit and Bernard Scholtz returned with wickets.
Earlier in the day, the Sri Lankan pacers were all over the Namibia batting unit and hurt them with a relentless barrage of bouncers and hard length deliveries.
All of the three pacers, Chamika Karunaratne, Dushmantha Chameera and Lahiru Kumara crossed the 140kmph barrier and returned with impressive figures. While Namibia did not lose their entire top order in that pressure phase, the quality pace bowling paved the way for Sri Lankan spinners to take wickets.
Mystery spinner Maheesh Theekshana starred with three wickets, while star player Wanindu Hasaranga picked up two from his four overs.
Although it was not a performance to boast about from the second ranked T20I bowler, and he was comfortably the worst among the Sri Lankan bowlers tonight.
The performance means that Sri Lanka can be supremely confident of their bowling unit and they just need to back them up with a batting performance.
For Namibia, this match was a wake-up call to the harsh reality that is the T20 World Cup. Coming into the game they had form in their side, but were slow to start off against a quality pace attack. To be fair to them Sri Lanka are the front runners in the group and they will not have to face the same again in the next two matches.
With this loss it is imperative that they win the next two games, else it would be early curtains for a side that came with so much promise in the showpiece ICC event.