SL v Ken: Lasith Malinga Returns with a Hat Trick as Kenya Are Decimated Despite Obuyas

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Sreelata YellamrazuMar 1 2011

Kenya's answers to Lasith Malinga's pace were too feeble to put on a strong enough fight to Sri Lanka, this despite the Obuya brothers trying to revive a lost cause int he SL v Kenya ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 match.

lasith malinga waves

It was a familiar case of meeting more than one's match as Kenya found out once more against Sri Lanka in the tournament. The story pretty much wrote itself after Kenya lost two quick wickets batting first with only eight runs on board.

If Kenya did manage to reach a score of 142 rather painstakingly in forty-four overs, it was because of Collins Obuya and David Obuya tried to make a match of it with individual half centuries in a partnership of six runs short of a century. However, it was slow going for Kenya and when the Obuya brothers departed, Kenya were back to their bleak ways.

Lasith Malinga was playing the first match of the tournament but looked far from rusty. Such was his rhythm that Kenya had to concede a hat trick before folding so tamely. Kenya could not find resistance and save for the Obuyas, it was pretty much a preordained result.

The formality of chasing the runs for victory was accomplished rather comfortably by the hosts at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo as Upul Tharanga used twelve boundaries for his sixty-seven runs while Tillekaratne Dilshan pulled off a Twenty20-like innings in his cameo of forty-four as Sri Lanka completed a nine wicket victory on the back of Lasith Malinga's six for thirty-eight in a match winning performance.

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