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Respite win for young Lankans
The leg spin and off spin combination of Malinga Bandara and Suraj Mohamed brought about some respite into the Sri Lanka A camp as they teamed up to pick six wickets and guide Sri Lanka A to a comfortable 59 run victory in their triangular game at Havelock Park yesterday.

The victory which was Sri Lankas first in four games and gave the host team an outside chance of making it to the final. Sri Lanka will now have to wait until the result of the last game between England and Pakistan to know their destiny.

Invited to bat first Sri Lanka lost the in-form Micheal Van Dort early (7/1) but were revived by useful knocks from Saman Jayantha (45) Prasanna Jayawardene (28), Malintha Gajanayake(35) and Russell Arnold (42). However all these batsmen got in and got out.

With skipper Jehan Mubarak (16) failing again the Sri Lankan middle order failed to build on the good start provided by the top order and eventually folded up for 224 in the 50th over. For the visitors David Harrison was the pick of the bowlers claiming 4 for 36 in 9 overs. Harrison was well supported by his fellow medium pacers who kept up the pressure on the Lankan batsmen with some accurate bowling.

Needing to score at a rate of 4.5 runs an over the England batsman were up against some accurate bowling.Medium pacers Nandika Ranjith and Gayan Wijekoon provided the ideal start by picking up the openers Vikram Solanki 8 and Mathew Prior(14) early to have the tourist on 23 for 2 wickets.Skipper Ian Bell 17 and Owais Shah 55 revived the innings with a 42 run stand for the 3 rd wicket. However with the introduction of the spinners Malinga Bandara and Suraj Mohamed England were on the backfoot.Bandara continued to torment the Englishman when he picked up Ian Bell caught behind by Prasanna Jayawardene.

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