News Sports Cricket Sri Lanka beat Australia by 5 wickets in opening T20

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



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.