Sri Lanka A wins first one-day game

Sri Lanka A has registered its first win in the series against Australia A after recording a five wicket victory in the opening one-day match of the three game series at Tony Ireland Stadium in Townsville today.

After winning the toss and batting first, the Australia A innings never really got momentum as regular wickets stemmed the flow of runs, restricting the hosts to 9-197 from their 50 overs.

In reply, Sri Lanka kept the visitors interested, losing wickets steadily at the top of the order, before a couple of handy partnerships steadied the innings through the middle overs, built on the back of 82 to Jeevan Mendis as the visitors got home in 47.5 overs at 5-198.

Post-match, Australia A captain George Bailey said it was obviously disappointing after strong wins in the four-day games and also in Friday’s Twenty20™ but is confident his side can bounce back ahead of Wednesday’s second one-day clash.

“We expected that Sri Lanka would be stronger in the one-day format, it suits their game a little better but I know we were close, just a little bit short with the bat today,” Bailey said after play.

“The wicket didn’t play as we expected it would, but Travis Birt and Xavier Doherty batted pretty well towards the end and we had some nice little partnerships. We were probably 30 or 40 short because I think 230 or 240 would have been pretty defendable.

“We always thought we were in the game, we just needed to keep taking wickets and I thought we did a really good job taking early wickets and that’s exactly what we needed to do but we could keep that going,” he said.

Only Travis Birt passed 50 with the bat for the home, working hard for his 54 from 91 deliveries, as he resurrected the innings before a tragic mix-up with team mate Xavier Doherty saw him run out.

Doherty kept the innings going as he finished as the second highest scorer with 37 not out, with opener Matthew Wade (33) the only other batsman to pass 50.

South Australian quick Jake Habberfield was the only bowler to pick up multiple wickets, but Bailey was happy with the way his bowlers applied themselves to the task.

“The way our bowlers bowled was good, they stuck at it all day and kept trying different things and that was really pleasing the way we fought it out,” the skipper said.

“For it to take them 48 overs to get the runs was a good effort by us,” he said.

Although tidy with the ball, some uncharacteristic errors in the field let the Australian bowlers down and the captain said he would be looking for that aspect to improve before the next game.

“Hopefully that will improve in the next game. We were certainly trying to throw the ball a lot at the stumps, but that’s probably an area can lift a little bit and particularly when you’re defending a low score,” he said.

“I think they just played a better game than us today. We’ve played some pretty good cricket so far, but they started the game pretty well today and it was hard for us to get that momentum back,” he said.

The victory gave the visitors their first win of the tour and a 1-0 lead in the one-day series ahead of the second match at Tony Ireland Stadium Wednesday (July 7), before the final match of the tour is played at Allan Border Field in Brisbane on Saturday July 11.

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