Hasaranga takes first ever LPL hat-trick, Kandy make winning start

It may only have been the first day of this season’s Lanka League Premier, but it is possible there may not be as comprehensive a win as the Kandy Falcon’s 109-run decimation of the Colombo Stars, for the rest of the tournament.

As daunting as the 200-run target would have been for the Kings when they began the chase, the task would have appeared even more arduous considering they would also have to face the best bowler in T20 international cricket to record an opening day win.

And it proved to be a task too much for Colombo’s stars with leg spinner Wanindu Hasaranga ripping through their top order, claiming the first ever hat-trick in LPL history, finishing with figures of 4 for 14 and only bowling three overs from his four-over quota.

Given the responsibility of captaining a franchise that finished rock bottom in the first two editions of the LPL, Hasaranga brought himself on to bowl soon after the Powerplay, and he promptly broke through the defence of Dinesh Chandimal, trapping Benny Howell and Seekkuge Prasanna leg before wickets in the next two deliveries – the trio deceived by Hasaranga’s clever deployment of the googly.

The Stars were already in trouble when Hasaranga came onto bowl, losing 3 for 38 in the Powerplay.

Hasaranga played a part in two of those wickets, with his direct hit finding Niroshan Dickwella short of his ground in the first over of the innings and then calming holding onto a catch from Ravi Bopara off Zahoor Khan’s bowling.

Hasaranga later took the wicket of Stars’ captain Angelo Mathews in the ninth over, as the Colombo team’s gambit of sending their skipper to open the innings didn’t pan out as they would have hoped.

While the entirety of Colombo’s batting were able to muster just 90 runs, it was not enough to surpass what Falcon’s opener Andre Fletcher managed by himself, scoring the tournament’s first hundred.

Fletcher struck 11 boundaries and three sixes, associating in partnership of 156 for the opening wicket, with Pathum Nissanka.