18/10/2022
27 years ago on this day a game remembered for Brian Lara's highest ODI score & Sri Lanka's gutsy run chase led by Hashan Tillakaratne.
It was a group stage game of Singer Champions trophy 1995 played at Sharjah. Batting first West Indies put on a mammoth total of 333/7 due to the brilliant career best 169 by Brian Lara. He was very well supported by Shiv Chanderpaul who scored 62 off 45 deliveries.
Sri Lanka had to chase down a then world record target of 334 & lost 3 wickets inside the first 11 overs. However they reached the 100 run mark inside those 11 overs scoring at a rate close to 10 runs per over. This was mainly due to the innings of 31 off 20 balls by kalu who was promoted ahead of Gurusinha, Arjuna & Hashan. Perhaps this performance played a big part in promoting him as an opening batsmen a few months later.
Sri Lanka lost 3 quick wickets of Kalu, Gurusinha & Arjuna for just 1 run leaving the score at 103/5. That's when no 7 Hashan Tillakaratne joined Roshan Mahanama in the middle. Together both tried to rebuild the innings & Mahanama eventually departed for 76 runs when the total was on 171. In came Chandika Hathurusingha as the no 8. While Hashan kept his end in tact, Hathurusingha kept the scoreboard moving scoring at a rate of run a ball. When the total was on 257. When Hathurusingha eventually departed for 45 runs with just 3 wickets in hand Sri Lanka still needed 77 to win.
Sri Lanka's no 9 was Kumar Dharmasena. "Unanaduwa" was not ready to go down without a fight. With the confidence of having ever so reliable Hashan Tillakaratne at the other end, he started to play his shots. His cameo of 18 ball 24 helped Sri Lanka to get 31 runs closer to the target. When the score was on 306 Kumar was dismissed & 10 runs later Murali too departed leaving Hashan with the last man Pramodya Wickramasinghe to score remaining 21 runs.
Pair kept the scoreboard moving & made sure Sri Lanka's hopes are alive. By the time of the last over Sri Lanka needed 8 runs to win. It was quite dark at the time & Pramodya scored a single off the first ball leaving Hashan to do the finishing touches. He scored couple off next ball & reached a well deserving hard fought century. If my memory was correct he was exhausted & even was vomiting at the time. With just 5 runs away from a historical victory, Hashan decided to finish the things off with a biggie. He smashed the full toss towards the mid wicket boundary & for a moment it looks like money. Unfortunately he found the hands of Stuart Williams on the boundary. It was a close call. However television coverage wasn't the best at the time & it was decided as a clean catch. Nevertheless Sri Lanka fell 4 runs short of what would've been an amazing successful run chase. Sad part was there was still 3 balls left to reach the task.
I was a 9 year old & didn't had the luxury of watching that game on television. However listened to every single ball via radio commentary while on bed recovering from chickenpox. We might've lost that day. But the courage shown by our batsmen has lit up a new fire. Few days later Sri Lanka went on to lift the Singer trophy defeating the same opposition in the finals & 5 months later capped it off by lifting the 96 world cup.
