Bangladesh suffer crushing defeat

Upul Tharanga and Mahela Jayawardena shared a record opening stand for Sri Lanka to hand them a comfortable victory over Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka beat Bangladesh by nine wickets to continue their unbeaten run in the tournament and book their spot in the finals.

It was an early start to the match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka at Dhaka to try and reduce the impact of dew on the team bowling second. Sri Lanka won the toss and put the hosts in, on what seemed to be a high scoring wicket. They got off to a sluggish start with 54 runs in the Quick start overs, having lost the key wicket of Tamim Iqbal. They lost another couple of wickets before the 20 over mark which slowed down the scoring rate further but Raqibul Hasan and Shakib Al Hasan put on 77 for the fourth wicket, giving the lower order batsmen something to fire from towards the end of the innings. But the Sri Lankan bowlers put the lid on the scoring by picking up five wickets in the Batting power play and reducing the hosts to a below par total of 249.

Sri Lanka got off to a strong start in their run chase with Upul Tharanga and Mahela Jayawardena, who was making his return to the side from injury scoring 68 runs in the first power play which put Sri Lanka in a dominating position early, as reflected on the Castrol Index worm. They batted with ease through the middle of the innings and kept nudging away without looking troubled at any point. The opening duo went on to score a century each on their way to sharing a record opening stand of 215 which put the match firmly in their favour.  They lost the wicket of Jayawardena (108) but eventually reached their target in the 43rd over.

Upul Tharanga was adjudged Man of the Match for his unbeaten 118 off just 126 balls with a Batting Momentum of 158.

The hosts will now have to hope that India lose their game against the Lankans on Sunday and win by a huge margin in their last game against India to have any chance of making the final.