Sri Lanka’s win in World Cup final - never to be forgotten!

By A. C. de Silva

CRICKET: Talk of cricket and Sri Lanka, cricket fans and even the older folk in Sri Lanka will come up with the answer that Sri Lanka were the World Cup Champions in 1996 beating the top team - Australia in the final played at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, Pakistan.

The 1996 World Cup will be remembered as a sporting fairytale... and as a political disaster. Sri Lanka has won Test matches but what will remain in the minds of all Lankans for a long time is that final.

The final, fortunately, delivered the perfect climax to a tournament that produced runs, drama, records and also romance. It also served up crowd violence, death threats and a grotesque political hijack.

Sri Lanka’s masterly team performance against the Aussies at the Gaddafi Stadium on that Sunday merely papered over those huge cracks.

Fittingly Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, one of the few political figures to offer sport a good example, was there to congratulate Arjuna Ranatunga and his team.

On that Sunday, Sri Lanka crushed favourites Australia. The Sri Lankans, ignoring the history books which dictated the only way to win a World Cup final was to bat first, cruised past Australia total of 241 for seven in 50 overs with 22 balls and seven wickets to spare, getting to 245 for 3 wickets in 46.2 overs.

Key moments in that World Cup final:

* Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga elected to field first despite knowing that no team batting second has won the previous five World Cups.

* Australia’s in-form batsman Mark Waugh makes 12 before flicking Chaminda Vaas uppishly to square-leg where Sanath Jayasuriya makes no mistake.

* Mark Taylor and Ruchky Ponting add 101 runs for the second wicket before the Australian skipper is snapped up by Jayasuriya at square-leg off Aravinda de Silva.

* De Silva catches Steve Waugh and Stuart Law and clean bowls Ian Healy as Australia lose six wickets for 58 runs to be reduced to 205 for seven by the 45th over.

* Michael Bevan makes an unbeaten 36 as he and Paul Reiffel put on 32 runs in the last five overs.

* Jayasuriya falls victim to a close run-out decision in the second over, and disaster strikes Sri Lanka. Then Romesh Kaluwitharana goes in the sixth over - for edging a ball off Damien fleming.

* New batsman Asanka Gurusinha survives a first-ball shooter from Fleming which takes the edge and misses both the stumps and a diving Healy. In the fifth over Gurusinha escaped being run out as Michael Bevan’s throw just eludes the wickets at the non-striker’s end.

* De Silva is missed by wicket-keeper Healy off Mark Waugh before he had settled in. The batsman goes on to make an unbeaten 107.

* Gurusinha is dropped twice by Flemming and Stuart Law during his 125-run stand with Aravinda de Silva for the third wicket.

* Ranatunga guides the second ball of the 47th over to the third man fence to bring up Sri Lanka’s maiden World Cup triumph. Light rain falls on the Gaddafi Stadium soon after the match.

1996 Wills World Cup

* Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe by 6 wickets.

Zimbabwe: 228 for 6 wkts in 50 overs (Vaas 2 for 30, Muralitharan 1 for 37 and Jayasuriya 1 for 37).

Sri Lanka: 229 for 4 wkts in 37 overs (Asanka Gurusinha 87, Aravinda de Silva 91).

Man of the match: Aravinda de Silva

* Sri Lanka beat India by 6 wickets.

India: 271 for 3 wkts in 50 overs.

Sri Lanka: 272 for 4 wkts in 48.4 overs (Sanath Jayasuriya 79, Romesh Kaluwitharana 26, Asanka Gurusinha 25, Arjuna Ranatunga 26 not out).

Man of the match: Sanath Jayasuriya.

* Sri Lanka beat Kenya by 144 runs.

Sri Lanka: 398 for 5 wkts in 50 overs (S. Jayasuriya 44, Romesh Kaluwitharana 35, Asanka Gurusinha 84, Aravinda de Silva 145, Arjuna Ranatunga 75 not out).

Kenya: 254 for 7 wkts in 50 overs (M. Muralitharan 2 for 40, Arjuna Ranatunga 2 for 31).

Man of the match: Aravinda de Silva

* Sri Lanka beat England by 5 wickets.

England: 235 for 8 wkts in 50 overs (M. Muralitharan 2 for 37, S. Jayasuriya 2 for 46).

Sri Lanka: 236 for 5 wkts in 40.4 overs (S. Jayasuriya 82, A. Gurusinha 45, Aravinda de Silva 31, Arjuna Ranatunga 25, H. Tillekeratne 19 not out, R. Mahanama 22 not out).

Man of the Match: Sanath Jayasuriya.

Semi-Final

* Sri Lanka beat India by default.

Sri Lanka: 251 for 8 wkts in 50 overs (Aravinda de Silva 66, Roshan Mahanama retd hurt 58, Arjuna Ranatunga 35, Hashan Tillekeratne 32, C. Vaas 23).

India: 120 for 8 wkts in 35.1 overs (Sanath Jayasuriya 3 for 12).

* The match was abandoned due to crowd behaviour and victory was awarded to Sri Lanka.

Man of the Match: Aravinda de Silva

Final

* Sri Lanka beat Australia by 7 wickets

Australia - sent into bat - 241 for 7 wkts in 50 overs (N. Taylor 74, R. Ponting 45, S. Law 22, M. Bevan 36 not out)

Sri Lanka: 245 for 3 wkts in 46.2 overs (Asanka Gurusinha 65, Aravinda de Silva 107 not out, Arjuna Ranatunga 47 not out).

Man of the match: Aravinda de Silva

Besides that much talked of World Cup final of 1996, the cricket audiences have a liking for one-day cricket. Blame the pace of modern life, blame the alternative leisure, blame what you like, the inescapable fact is that the average spectator these days lacks the patience of his predecessors.

He demands instant action and a guaranteed result. This very probably, explains the remarkable growth and current success of limitedover cricket and, more particularly, one-day internationals.

It is not so very long since internationals were regarded by the players concerned as an aggravation after a lengthy series of the real Test match business, and by the majority of cricket followers as a gimmick with which they could not quite come to terms.

The one-day international had no history, no category, no obvious meaning. Perhaps most people thought that it would soon go await. But it didn’t. Like an out-of-control plant it has grown at a near alarming rate, spreading its branches around the cricketing world and, in some quarters, achieving the unthinkable of more or less swallowing-up of Test matches themselves in terms of public interest.

Fine example

So many international matches are played nowadays, particularly during the English winter, that it is difficult for all but the keenest cricket statisticians to keep abreast of even the bare bones of results.

The volume of games can be illustrated through one player, the Australian captain, of not so long ago, Allan Border, who at the end of August 1982, had played a total of 48 one-day internationals.

By the beginning of June 1985 - less than three years on - he had appeared in no fewer then 114 into this period. Border had somehow crammed 66 one-day internationals, as against 29 Tests and it was no great surprise to hear him admit that even his huge appetite was jaded.

The starting point

All those associated with the game have acclimatised to the modern fixture set-up so thoroughly that it is hard to recall accurately the day when the one-day internationals had no place in the calender.

It seems inconceivable that the decade of the 1970s was actually under way before the first such game was played.

Stranger still that, far from being a masterly stroke of long-term planning by cricketing administrators, that inaugural event took place only by accident, as an after-thought and a substitute.

The cause of it all was a desperately wet New Year in Melbourne during the 1970-71 series between Australia and England. Ray Illingworth’s side, on its way to regaining the Ashes, was kept in the pavilion for three day sat which point a decision was taken to abandon the third Test and, controversially, add an extra Test to the end of the programme.

At the same time, largely to give the frustrated holiday-making spectators some crumbs of consolation after their watery wait, a momentous and far-reaching proposal to play a 40-overs-a-side international on what would have been the final day of the Test was adopted.

Those officials, who agreed upon this happy compromise, doubtless imagnined the 40-over game would be seen as nothing more than an exhibition match of the type which had been played on a number of previous occasions.

It may even be true that, if some of them had possessed even an inkling of what it would lead to, the suggestion would have been hastily withdrawn. But the match went ahead on January 5th, 1971, with the rules under which the John Player League was already operating in England those days.

Australia perhaps surprisingly as it was universed in the demands of the restricted game, won by five wickets, and a look back to the respective team is interesting. It was to be the first and only such international played by the Australian captain Bill Lawry and by England’s Celin Cowdrey, but two men on the English side (Geoffrey Boycott and Keith Fletcher) and two Australians (Greg Chappell and Rodney Marsh) would still be involved more than two decades later and were to play, between them, in 200 internationals.

Arrival of T.V. mogul

Australia’s comfortable win that day in Melbourne was watched of nearly 50,000 which can only have encouraged the home authority to contemplate that there might be something in this new form of the game, But apparently not, it was another four years before Australia staged another international and then, with England again the visitor, it was a relative flop.

Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were in the process of destroying Mike Denness’ tourists in a traumatic Test series and the cricket public were not keen to diversity their attention.

There were only around 18,000 spectators who turned up, the cricketing fare was unappetising, and a similarly low-key experiment against the West Indies later the same year might well have persuaded Australian administrators to write off one-day internationals as a waste of time. If a certain television mogul had not come along.

Although England launched its partnership with Prudential, in the shape of a regular home series of internationals, in 1972, other countries remained sceptical. Only New Zealand staged a game, fitting a single fixture against Pakistan between the second and third Tests of its 1973 series.

This was also breaking new ground in being the first one-day international staged on a Sunday and, although Pakistan was beaten, its captain, Intekhab Alam, showed some grasp of the more positive approach demanded by this short form of the game by opening the batting himself.