Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Thirimanne celebrates reaching his century against England. Sri Lanka needed only three batters to eclipse England’s fairly solid first-innings total of 309 runs.
England’s difficult time at the Cricket World Cup continued with a nine-wicket loss to Sri Lanka on Saturday night in a Group A match in Wellington, New Zealand.
England has won one of its first four matches and, while it may still progress to the quarterfinals, a win in the quarterfinals will require major changes. On Saturday, at least, England started fairly well. Joe Root scored 121 runs and England finished 309-6, a solid total against a better-than-average bowling attack.
But the England bowling was cut to ribbons by Sri Lanka, which needed only three batters to chase down the 309 runs. Sri Lanka scored 312-1.
Lahiru Thirimanne scored 139 runs not out and Kumar Sangakkara added 117 runs not out, off 113 balls. It’s a quite healthy strike rate of 136. (Strike rate is the number of runs a player would score in 100 deliveries. It’s a key metric in one-day cricket as players sometimes need to score quickly. Any strike rate above 75 is good.)
England has remaining games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Even with wins in both those matches, England would appear doomed to face the top team from Group B. That’s likely to be India.
For Sri Lanka, Sangakkara became the No. 3 all-time scorer in World Cup matches. He has 1,258 runs. Sri Lanka is virtually assured of a spot in the quarterfinals.
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