India survive Lanka surge

When Ashish Nehra steamed into bowl the final delivery, with Sri Lanka needing five runs to win, a billion hearts might have skipped a beat or two.

However, Nuwan Kulasekara could only take a run off the 300th legal delivery, bringing to an end an amazing day of cricket when 825 runs were scored in 100 overs, leaving the home side a three-run victory in the first of the five one-day series.

Highest total

The incandescence of Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan’s batting carried the Islanders to 411, so close to India’s 414.

It was India’s highest total in one-day cricket, surpassing their previous best of 413 against Bermuda at Port of Spain in the 2007 World Cup.

It was also only the second time two teams went past the 400-run mark in the same match, and the first occasion was that famous match involving Australia and South Africa at Johannesburg in 2006.

Before Sri Lanka made a brave fist of their chase, it was the turn of Virender Sehwag and M S Dhoni to entertain the crowd on a pitch tailor-made to score runs.
Sehwag batted in the way only he can while racing to a buccaneering 146, his 12th one-day hundred and his highest score in ODIs so far.

Dhoni’s feat

Captain Dhoni, who en route to his half-century, completed 5,000 runs in his 152nd ODIs match, also achieved a landmark 200 dismissals in one-day cricket when he stumped Sanath Jayasuriya off Harbhajan Singh. A match of such nature will have a lot of records to offer.

A unique feat that was achieved was the first and second wicket pairs of both the sides stitched together 150-run partnership, a first in the history of one-day cricket.