Sri Lanka beat Australia by 5 wickets in opening T20

Sydney, Jan 27: Sri Lanka downed Australia by five wickets to win the opening T20 international at the Sydney Olympic Stadium here on Saturday. Two towering sixes on consecutive balls from Sri Lanka's Thisara Perera sealed a comfortable win for the visitors, who have now beaten Australia in their last four T20s. The win was set up by some superb bowling from Sri Lankan pair Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Kulasekara, who earlier restricted the Australians to 137-3 from their 20 overs. The Sri Lankans reached the target with seven balls to spare and are now guaranteed of retaining their number one ranking regardless of what happens in the second and final match in Melbourne on Monday.Australia earlier won the toss and chose to bat, but apart from opener David Warner they found scoring difficult. The Sri Lankans always had the target well in hand, once openers Kushal Perera (33) and Tillakaratne Dilshan (16) put on 46 runs in 38 balls for the opening wicket. Kushal, making his international T20 debut, showed no signs of nerves as he took to the Australians with relish. He outscored Dilshan, who was hit in the head by a Ben Laughlin bouncer and needed treatment for a cut above his eye. Australia finally got the breakthrough when Dilshan fell to the spin bowling of Doherty, Laughlin taking a magnificent diving catch at point. They struck again soon after when ushal edged Maxwell to wicketkeeper Matthew Wade and Chandimal (5) was caught in the outfield by Ben Cutting off Maxwell. Doherty then got the wicket of Mahela Jaywardene when he bowled the former Sri Lankan skipper for just eight.Angelo Mathews (35 not out) and Lahiru Thirimanne steadied the innings and got Sri Lanka back on track but on 104 Thirimanne slashed at a Mitchell Starc delivery outside off stump and was caught at backward point by Adam Voges. However, Mathews kept the scoreboard ticking over to move the Sri Lankans to within striking distance. Earlier, Warner played a lone hand with 90 runs off just 62 balls, blasting five fours and three huge sixes. Voges was the next highest scorer with 25, while Kulasekara was the pick of the bowlers with 1-21 from his four overs.Warne, the brutal lefthander, showed there was a big gap from international cricket to the Big Bash by scoring 90 not out of Australia's 3/137 before 40,000 fans at ANZ Stadium.Australia has a chance at redemption with the second Twenty20 match in Melbourne on Monday. The Australia Day crowd was almost 20,000 below what India attracted to the corresponding game on February 1 last year but still significantly higher than any one-day crowd during the recently completed five-match series against Sri Lanka.The best one-day crowd was 27,000 at the MCG, however the biggest white ball crowd in Australia this summer remains the 47,000 who attended the Melbourne Big Bash derby between Shane Warne's Stars and the Renegades.Clubbing all but one of the boundaries in Australia's innings, Warner excelled as the Big Bash heroes chosen to bat around him struggled to do any more than construct picket fences of scrambled singles.Warner faced just 62 balls, hitting five fours and three sixes as he batted through the innings on a slow pitch.He felt 150 was a par score.The one shot of note from Warner's team mates last night came when captain George Bailey drove a perfectly straight six in his 11 from nine balls."To be honest I thought our fielding was disappointing," Bailey said later."That probably cost us 10 runs, plus four or five dropped catches."Sri Lanka started well but began to unravel from about the time Dilshan was hit in the helmet by a short ball from Ben Laughlin and went down with a cut over his right eye, holding up play for some time.Laughlin rubbed salt into the open wound by running back at point to take a brilliant diving catch off Dilshan (16) after he miscued a charge against Xavier Doherty as Australia's spinners claimed the first four wickets.