South Africa stumbled to an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka on tuesday. It is a startling reminder to all South African cricket fans of the Protea's horrendous showing at the World Cup they hosted. The one positive is it can't be called choking, a reputation South African Cricket is trying to lose, to get thrashed at the begining of the tournament.
The dissapointing loss arguably started with Graham Smith's peculiar desicion to bowl after winning the toss. On top of that the South African players took far to long to chisle the rust off, the bowlers weren't able to take advantage of early conditions in their favour.
The following is a concise rap up of the game, found at icc-cricket.yahoo.net, in case you missed the game.
Sri Lanka got its tournament off to a brilliant start with a 55-run (D/L method) defeat of hosts South Africa at Centurion on Tuesday in the ICC Champions Trophy.
Tillakaratne Dilshan inspired the victory with a match-winning innings of 106, opening the batting, although he received excellent support from Mahela Jayawardena (77) and Sangakkara (54) to help it post 319-8.
South Africa looked short of match practice, making some uncharacteristic fielding errors and bowling some untidy spells, with the normally reliable Wayne Parnell conceding 79 runs in his 10 overs, although he did take three wickets along with Dale Steyn.
In reply, Graeme Smith looked in fine form as he raced to his half-century but he fell to the very first ball of Ajantha Mendis' spell and while Kallis (41) and many others in the top and middle order got good starts nobody could produce the big innings that was needed to chase down the huge target.
Mendis (3-30) was the pick of the Sri Lanka attack and when a torrential thunderstorm stopped play South Africa was 206-7, 55 runs short of its D/L target.
Pakistan faces the West Indies on Wednesday in the second match of the event.
