Sri Lanka v Australia: Second Twenty20 global in Colombo

Sri Lanka won the toss for the ninth time in ten matches on tour, and chose to bat first in the second Twenty20 worldwide at the R Premadasa Stadium.

Australia’s players pose after winning the final T20 global cricket match.

Both the teams engaged in practices at the grounds today. Dravid Warner has led this team brilliantly and even in first t20 match he smashed quickfire 22 runs to give a platform to Maxwell to play freely.

After Australia absolutely thumped Sri Lanka in the first T20, when they went on to post a world record score, with Glenn Maxwell running riot, Dilshan would have at least hoped for the flawless sendoff in his final match in Sri Lankan colours.

In the process, he also brought the fastest fifty by an Australian batsman in the format, needing 18 deliveries to reach there.

And Australian cricket captain Meg Lanning said the country’s top female players were better prepared than ever for the contest, after a significant pay rise had allowed them to spend extra time in training over the winter.

“Something we want to keep improving on”.

If Sri Lanka wins, the series will be drawn 1-1 and technically the hosts will retain bragging rights after winning the previous Twenty20 series in 2013.

“The wicket probably wasn’t up to scratch in the games”.

The 24-year-old has now nearly fully recovered and said she had watched quite a bit of the Australian men’s cricket team’s tour of Sri Lanka, where the hosts won the Test series 3-0 but Australia took the one-day internationals 4-1.

And his return of 134 runs from nine innings across all three formats in Sri Lanka cost him his Test berth for the third game of that series, and his place in the ODI squad for the upcoming visit to South Africa. “We’ve only got 12 fit players as in Finch is not available and George has gone home so Wade will play”. That’s exactly what he can do when given the opportunity. Once Aaron Finch comes back in, he’ll (Maxwell) probably have to move down the order and assess what his game plan is again.

Dilshan will be looking forward to another chance to end his storied, 17-year career in inspiring fashion. “We’ve seen him do it at the top, we’ve seen him doing it in the middle – there’s no excuse”.