Chester-le-Street: Playing for pride, South Africa dished out a fine bowling effort to bowl out Sri Lanka for a modest 203 in their eight and penultimate league match of the World Cup, here Friday.
Opting to bowl, the Proteas picked up wickets at regular intervals after the first 10 overs to never allow the Sri Lankan middle-order settle down. Drafted into the playing eleven in place of Lungi Ngidi, pacer Dwaine Pretarius (3/25) justified his selection with a three-wicket haul.
Chris Morris (3/46) and Kagiso Rabada (2/36) shared five wickets between them. However, it was Rabada who started Sri Lanka’s downfall dismissing skipper Dimuth Karunaratne with the first ball of the match. He was caught by his counterpart Faf du Plessis at second slip as he failed to tackle a short ball.
Thereafter, Kusal Perera (30, 34b, 4×4) and Avishka Fernando (30, 29b, 4×4) took the counter-attacking approach and played fearlessly to stitch a 67-run stand off 58 balls before the duo perished in quick succession.
Right-arm pacer Pretorius sent both the batsmen packing in consecutive overs as Sri Lanka slumped to 72 for three in 11.3 overs. After that most of the Sri Lankan batsmen had starts but failed to convert those to substantial scores.
Angelo Mathews (11), Kusal Mendis (23), Dhananjaya de Silva (24) , Jeeva Mendis (18) and Thisara Perera (21) all got starts but threw away their wickets when Sri Lanka needed them to carry on.
Brief scores: Sri Lanka 203 all out in 49.3 overs (Kusal Perera 30, Avishka Fernando 30, Dwaine Pretarius 3/25, Chris Morris 3/46) versus South Africa
PTI
