Sri Lanka v Pakistan 5th ODI Review- Pakistan tamed easily in the final game, but win the series

Sri Lanka v Pakistan 5th ODI Review- Pakistan tamed easily in the final game, but win the series: In what was one of the most one sided contests of late, the Lankan lions preyed upon the clueless Pakistanis in a viciously vengeful fashion mauling them by 165 runs. But despite the extraordinary win, they were left to rue their mistakes committed in the previous matches as they lost the series in an agonizing manner of 3-2.

Four of Sri Lanka’s batsmen registered scores of over 50 and no bowler was spared, more particularly Yasir Shah was taken to the cleaners often and it was one way traffic all the way. Probably the Pakistan team were a little care free or complacent coming into the match after having pocketed up the series and Sri Lanka gave them a sound thrashing that to a marginal extent managed to sour the sweetness of their series win.

Batting first Sri Lanka were off to a decent start with Dilshan and Kusal Perera carefully piling up the runs with utmost maturity and appreciable tenacity. Kusal Perera displayed top notch batting skills that propelled him to reach the three figure mark.

Tilakaratne Dilshan was in sublime form as well as he struck a fruitfully delightful half century that derailed the usually dread Pakistani pace attack. Dilshan also became the 11th player to pass 10,000 ODI runs, a feat that he will definitely cherish and relish for years to come.

Kusal Perera was in relentless mood today, he struck two consecutive sixes in the 16th over of Imad Wasim and the Pakistani bowlers were listless and were left demoralized at the sudden injection of aggression. Sri Lanka was well set to surpass the 300 mark. But the men who catapulted the score to even greater heights was Angelo Mathews and Siriwardene.

Siriwardene registered an astounding strike rate of 200 while Mathews scored 70 off just 40 balls. The beleaguered Pak bowlers were left to rue their unimpressive and erring lines and the frenzied onslaught at the end by Mathews and Siriwardene signalled all sorts of problems for Pakistan. Eventually the score was a colossal 368 on the board.

A total of over 300 was never before chased in Sri Lanka, and the trend continued in the Mahinda Rajapaksha International Cricket Stadium, Hambantota as they were humiliated by a vengeful Sri Lankan team by a huge margin of 165 runs. Mohammed Hafeez’s 37 was the highest score of the Pakistan innings and their dismal innings came to a woeful end at 203. Kusal Perera was adjudged the man of the match. Interestingly, he was the man of the match in both the games that Sri Lanka ended up on the triumphant side.

Brief Scores of Sri Lanka v Pakistan 5th ODI:

Sri Lanka- 368 for 4 50 overs (Kusal 116, Ali-2 for 74) won by 165 runs.

Pakistan- 203 all out 37.2 overs (Hafeez-37, Senanayake 3 for 39)