Pakistan beat Sri Lanka to reach the final of Asia Cup Cricket 2012

DHAKA, Bangladesh (Thu, Mar. 15) – Pakistan beat Sri Lanka comprehensively by 6 wickets in the third match of the Asia Cup played today here at Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Mirpur. Pakistan qualifies for the big final on March 22 after the today’s victory against Sri Lanka.

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka to reach the final of Asia Cup Cricket 2012

Hammad Azam played the winning stroke with 10 overs and one ball to spare to win a bonus point for Pakistan. The masterly crafter innings by skipper Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal snatched the advantage from Sri Lanka, which they had for taking three wickets for just 33 on board for Pakistan.

Umar Akmal played extraordinarily amazing innings, one can say the best in the circumstances, and scored 77 off 72 balls. In his innings he smashed 7 fours and 2 huge sixes. Misbah also played good innings rather a calm one comparing to his younger partner. He was unbeaten at 72 off 93, with 9 boundaries and one towering six.

Earlier, Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bat first; but kept on losing wickets in effort to score runs quickly. Aizaz Cheema and Umar Gul smashed all over the park but they kept on bowling aggressively and got the reward. Aizaz Cheema bowled even more impressively in the death overs and rewarded by 4 wickets and named as man of the match.

Saeed Ajmal also bowled good spells in between and picked up more important wicket of Upul Tharanga (57) to break the vital partnership between Tharanga and Kumar Sangakkara (71). In 46^th over, Sri Lanka were all out for just 188 on board.

In reply, Pakistan had even more disastrous start losing Muhammad Hafeez (11), Nasir Jamshed (18) and Younis Khan (2) with just 33 on board. Then came Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal and swept away the winning hopes away from Sri Lanka and made them out of the tournament on very early stages of the tournament.

Pakistan is now on the top of the points table with 9 points followed by India and Bangladesh respectively.