BRISTOL, Friday – The Sri Lanka-Pakistan World Cup cricket encounter turned out to be a non-starter when persistent rain throughout the day washed out play forcing the game to be abandoned as a no-result at the County ground here on Friday.Both teams shared the two points. By virtue of the one point each team gained from this match both Sri Lanka and Pakistan with three points each move to third and fourth positions in the World Cup table behind New Zealand and Australia each with four points.
This is the first game in the 2019 Cricket World Cup to suffer this fate as all the other 10 games played to-date were somehow played to a finish despite the weather interfering in some.The forecast for the day was so bad that neither team left their hotel to travel to the venue until late in the afternoon when the skies cleared and the sun came out.The playing square and the immediate surroundings were under cover the entire day which was not a good indication.Around 2pm the rain ceased and umpires Nigel Llong and Ian Gould made an inspection at 2.30 pm and after a further inspection at 3.45 pm decided to call off the match despite the sun coming out. The ground had taken a lot of rain and there were some watery patches on the outfield which caused concern.
This is the third ODI to suffer this fate at Bristol which is the home of Gloucestershire cricket and has hosted 20 matches, three of them World Cup games. The 2014 ODI between England and India was abandoned without a ball bowled and the 2016 match between England and Sri Lanka ended in a no-result with rain interrupting play after 54 overs. Incidentally the first ODI played at Bristol was the 1983 World Cup match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand and won by the Black Caps by five wickets.
Sri Lanka invited to bat first was dismissed for 208 in 56.1 overs with Sir Richard Hadlee running through the batting taking five wickets for 25 off 10.1 overs. Top scorer for Sri Lanka was Ranjan Madugalle with 60 while skipper Duleep Mendis scored 43, and Brendon Kuruppu and Roy Dias made 26 and 25 apiece. New Zealand knocked the runs off in 39.2 overs scoring 209-5 with Glen Turner (50), John Wright (45) and skipper Geoff Howarth (76) as the main scorers.
Ashantha de Mel was the pick of the Lankan bowlers taking two wickets (of Wright and Martin Crowe) for 30 runs in 8 overs and Rumesh Ratnayake had figures of one for 60 of 12 overs.De Mel also has fond memories at this venue where on the 1981 historic tour of England when Sri Lanka received ICC Test status, he scored a match-saving 94 to draw the 3-day tour match against Gloucestershire. Sri Lankans trailing on the first innings by 170 runs had slumped to 145-6 in their second innings before De Mel with the help of DS de Silva (97) and Lalith Kaluperuma (40) helped Sri Lanka recover to 398 and stave off defeat.
Madugalle is presently the chief ICC match referee, Mendis the head coach of Oman, Dias coach of the Sri Lanka ‘A’ side, Kuruppu, a national selector, Ratnayake the national team’s fast bowling coach and, De Mel the chairman of selectors and manager of the present Sri Lanka World Cup side. Sri Lanka’s next fixture of the 2019 World Cup is also at this venue against Bangladesh on Tuesday June 11.
