Udana hat-trick lights up dead rubber

A match that would have not drawn in much attention produced a moment of magic when Udana scalped 3 wickets in 3 balls, one of which was a wide, to give the Sri Lankan side something to smile ahead of their return journey. The Wayamba Elevens' bowling was top notch and Isuru Udana's slower ones had the side from New Zealand in all sorts of trouble. Rangana Herath and Ajantha Mendis wizardry too had the batsmen often taking a swipe at thin air and they also helped their form with a few wickets as the New Zealand side fell way short.

Jehan Mubarak had earlier won the toss and elected to bat first. They got off to a decent start before Michael Mason had Jeevantha Kulatunga caught by Brendon Diamanti for 6. Mahela Jayawardene was in in some good nick after his good innings in the last match and helped himself onto 20 with a nice hook over fine leg before he chipped a ball meekly to Kieran Noema-Barnett at mid on. Mahela Udawatte and captain Mubarak seemed to take forever to decide to start picking up the scoring rate and by the time they did the pressure had gotten to them. Udawatte's innings was very slow and that had exerted immense pressure on all the batsmen. Udawatte himself looked like he wasn't having the best time in the middle and his dismissal would have been viewed upon as a blessing in disguise by fans and maybe the team themselves. The team struggled to catch up with the desired scoring rate and fall well short of what they would've liked on the board.

Mubarak's 30 was the top score for the team and one good over of Seth Rance that went for 20 helped propel the team to 144 runs. The track was playing well and the Stags' would've fancied themselves to chase down the score with relative ease. But neither Wayamba nor the Stags would've anticipated what would unfurl over the next 15.3 overs.

Mendis opened the attack along with Isuru Udana and the mystery spinner picked up danger-man and in-form batsmen Jamie How in the 2nd over. Udana's 2nd over and the innings' 3rd over was when all hell broke loose, the Stags' batsmen couldn't cope with Udana's slower deliveries. Patton was first Udana's first scalp when he tried to clip him to long on but was beaten by the slow pace of the delivery and only managed to scoop a dolly to the keeper. Udana slipped the next ball to Mathew Sinclair from around the stumps to the leg side, the former New Zealand player fell over trying to clip it of his legs and was well stumped by KJ Perera. George Worker then misread the line of another Udana slower one to be bowled and give Udana and CLT20 the first hat-trick. The Stags had suddenly slumped to 16/4 and the target of 144 seemed a mammoth one.

Mendis then came back and removed Ingram leg before, and the Stags were staring at a huge defeat. Herath also joined the party when he picked up the wicket of Noema-Barnett and then it was only a matter of delaying the inevitable for the Stags' tail-enders.

Herath, Mendis, Lokuarachchi and Perera picked up the final four wickets as the Stags' were bowled out for an embarrassing 70. Mubarak showed the kind of energy that was running in the Wayamba team when he threw himself at Briggs' uppish cover drive and spectacularly took a one handed catch.

The superb performance would have left the team management and captain wondering about what might have been if the team had performed like this earlier in the tournament. But he will be happy that the team signed off with a resounding win. The Stags will be ruing the two close losses and would have wished to have at least won one of them to register points in the tournament. It has been a disappointing tournament for these two teams and they will both look forward to getting back to their stride in their domestic seasons.