Indian Captain M.S.Dhoni played a cool and sensible inning of 50 runs of 68 balls to guide his team home by two wickets with four balls remaining in one of the closest finish in the tournament so far.
Chasing a target of 239 runs for victory India got of to disastrous start, when L.Malinga clean bowled Sachin Tendulkar for duck with a beauty of delivery. Indian team management sent Robin Uthappa (10 runs of 28 balls) to bat at number three however he also didn’t lasted longer and was run out brilliantly by Sanath Jayasurya to reduce the Indian score to 33/2.
Two overs later Gautam Gambhir who was playing mix with caution and aggression got out caught behind on bowling of I.Amarsinghe for 15 runs and leave his team struggling at 35/3. However the dashing left-hander Yuvraj Singh who has shown some form in the last outing hold the inning together with Rohit Sharma to get pass the score to 50. Both put on 64 runs for the 4th wicket before Rohit Sharma (24 runs of 36 balls) got out at dip-midwicket on the bowling of M.Muralitharan.
However Yuvraj Singh (76 runs of 70 balls) and M.S.Dhoni (50 runs from 68 balls) kept their team in the hunt with some good running between the wicket and by playing some lusty blows between the overs especially by Yuvraj Singh. They put on 59 runs for the fifth wicket, before Yuvraj Singh bowled by superb yorker from Chaminda Vaas in the 33rd over.
With 81 runs more needed in 17 over with five wickets in hand, Indian captain M.S. Dhoni controlled the inning by playing around the rest of the batters to follow and guided his team to 2 wickets win. Irfan Pathan made useful 31 runs.
Earlier Sri Lankan captain won the toss and decided to bat first at Adeliade Oval. However his team got of to shaky start and they lost 2 quick wickets in first three overs of their inning. With both the opener back in the hut now it was up to Sri Lankan captain M.Jayawardne and K.Sangkara to guide his team to post a challenging total for the Indians. They did what was required. Both put on 153 runs for the third wicket to help his team to pile up 238 runs in allotted 50 overs.
M.Jayawardne made 71 runs while Kumar Sangkara made brilliant 128 runs from 156 balls with 12 fours.
Both teams made one changes to their squad. Indian team bring all-rounder Praveen Kumar replacing S Sreesanth in the playing eleven and Sri Lanka recalled Ishara Amarasinghe in place of Nuwan Kulasekara.
K.Sangkara was declared Man of the Match for his brilliant century.
