Jayawickrama, Mendis help Sri Lanka to series win

Sri Lanka were only five wickets away from a win when the final day began. And when Liton Das got out in the third over of the day, it seemed a collapse was on the cards. And indeed it came true as Bangladesh were bowled out for 227 before lunch on Day 5 on Monday (May 3). The win helped Sri Lanka to pocket the series 1-0.

Resuming their innings at 177 for 5, Bangladesh had the enviable job of batting out the day and indeed Liton Das had to be the torchbearer of it as he was the only last recognised batter left.

But in the third over, Praveen Jayawickrama, Bangladesh's latest nemesis, struck gold for his team by removing Das. He set up the batter first with an away spinning delivery and then slipped in the arm ball to have the batter play down the wrong line. Das took a review but his optimism crashed and Bangladesh were six down in no time.

The duo of Jayawickrama and Ramesh Mendis continued bowling relentlessly before Dhanajaya de Silva replaced Mendis and took two balls to produce a wicket in the form of Taijul Islam.

Jayawickrama and Mendis were back together bowling in tandem again and finished off the innings by picking up five and four wickets respectively. With another fifer in the game, Jayawickrama finished with 11 for the game.

With this win, SL have pocketed the series 1-0 as the first Test saw a high scoring draw. Earlier in the Test, SL batted first and put up a big first innings score of 493 for 7 decl with their openers scoring hundreds. Bangladesh faltered in their first innings as Jayawickrama picked up a six-fer to derail the visitors.

SL chose to bat again and put a huge target of 437 for Bangladesh on a wicket which had started showing enough signs of aiding spin. Bangladesh did get off to a positive start but kept losing too many wickets at regular intervals. Their top seven batters got starts but none could go beyond 40. In the end, SL spinners who accounted for all the wickets in the second innings wrapped it up early on Day 5.

Brief Scores: Sri Lanka 493/7 and 194/9 decl (Dimuth Karunaratne 66, Dhananjaya de Silva 41; Taijul Islam 5-72, Mehidy Hasan 2-66) beatBangladesh 251and 227 (Mushfiqur Rahim 40, Mehidy Hasan 39; Praveen Jayawickrama 5-86, Ramesh Mendis 4-103) by 209 runs.