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 December 22, 2006 (Link to Scorecard)

Sanath Jayasuriya had a great day at the Westpac Stadium with both the ball and the bat as his efforts saw Sri Lanka ease to an 18-run win in the first of the two Twenty20 Internationals. Sri Lanka who were chasing a target of 163 from the allotted 20 overs were sitting pretty at 62 for 1 after 5.5 overs when rain had come down heavily to put an end to the proceedings. At the end of 5.5 overs, Sri Lanka needed to be 45 at the loss of 1 wicket.

Not much crowd was in for this match primarily because of the weather in Wellington. The match did get underway with New Zealand winning the toss and batting first. An amazing start it was from Stephen Fleming and Brendon McCullum who was playing like a pure batsman. The pair put on a perfect 80 for the first wicket before Fleming played onto his stumps off Farveez Maharoof in the 8th over. The NZ Skipper made 38 from 24 with six fours. Brendon McCullum joined his skipper at almost the same time in the pavilion as he was caught in the deep off Muralitharan. He had done his damage by then smashing 39 from 22 with 2 fours and 4 sixes!

After the dismissals of the two openers, NZ lost wickets at regular intervals as Murali and Jayasuriya pegged them back with their vast experience. They eventually got to 162 having lost 8 wickets with Jayasuriya taking three of them for 21 in his 4 overs. Murali who was smacked for two sixes came back incredibly well to end up with 2 for 27 in 4.

In their chase, Upul Tharanga couldn’t take advantage of a dropped catch and was out without troubling any one much. He made just 6 runs before he was out to Shane Bond, but the runs on the board were already 36 after 4.1 overs with Jayasuriya playing some great cricketing shots. He raced away to the fastest half century in this version of the game with 51 runs coming in 23 balls with 10 fours and a six. Andre Adams looking to make his comeback into the NZ side was taken apart for 18 runs in the five deliveries that he had bowled. One of the most interesting things to have happened in the game was the New Zealand wicket keeper, Peter McGlashan wearing a rugby helmet while keeping the wickets instead of the normal batting helmet! The other thing was that New Zealand were in their 1992 World Cup uniforms. Both sides have one more Twenty20 to be played on Tuesday before they get into the 5-ODI Series.

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