Sri Lanka Tour Of Pakistan - Butt, Rao Shine for Pakistan

Pakistan, playing their first One day International cricket series in 6 months, floored Sri Lanka in the opening match in Karachi. A sensational 8 wicket win against Sri Lanka showed the Pakistan team was in full form despite being clouded with controversies.

The opening batsmen played responsibly against the dynamic duo of Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis. However, soon they found their niche and there was no looking back there on. Opener Salman Butt scored an unbeaten century - his eighth in ODI - and Khurram Manzoor knocked a splendid 50 in only the 5th game of his ODI career. This was the third 50 of his 5 ODI appearances.

Sri Lanka's modest total of 220 runs was not the only thing that kept the Pakistani cricket team from losing the match. A brilliant performance by the team as a whole was behind their thrilling win. Medium-pacer Rao Iftikhar Anjum bagged his career-best of 4-42 to reduce the Sri Lankans to219 all out with 4.4 overs remaining.

The decision by Pakistan to field 4 specialist pacers proved fruitful. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the new-ball pairing of Shoaib Akhtar and Sohail Tanveer who were both unable to get any wickets.  Shoaib ended his spin with 0-43 whereas Sohail was equally unimpressive with 0-35 from 5 overs.
The duo of Gul and Rao made up for the ineffective spell of Shoaib and Sohail. Rao seems to be on fire with his previous career-best of 5-59 coming in the last ODI Pakistan played against West Indies in November. Umar Gul also bagged an exciting 3-30.

Khurram hit Mendis for 2 boundaries one ball after the other making his intentions very clear. The 22 years old player struck 2 more magnificent boundaries off the star spinner in the 32nd over of the match. Both Salman and Khurram showed unwavering confidence facing the most lethal of bowlers. Mendis, who has an impressive record of 55 wickets from only 21 ODI matches, finished off with a surprising 0-41 in 7 overs. This was the 3rd time that he had been unable to haul any wickets in a One Day International.

Muttiah Muralitharan, who was short of only 9 wickets to surpass the record set by the legendary Pakistani bowler Wasim Akram of 502 ODI wickets, could only get 1-42.

There is no doubting the fact that Pakistan's star batsman remained Salman Butt who scored his century off just 113 balls with the help of an amazing 13 boundaries. The left-handed batsman made no mistakes and played a magnificent inning to to lead Pakistan to victory on Tuesday.

After Khurram got out, Butt was joined at the crease by the veteran player Younis Khan. Together they took Pakistan over 200 runs before Younis was caught at mid-on by Mendis off a ball by Farveez Mahroof. Skipper Shoaib Malik (11) joined Butt and together they cruised their team to victory.

Sri Lankan openers, Tilakaratne Dilshan and Sanath Jayasuriya put on a quick 71 runs off 53 balls. It seemed as if Pakistan was in for a long run chase but Gul got rid of both the openers slowing down the guest side. Dilshan scored 42 off 33, Jayasuriya 38 off 35, Sangakkara 49 off 40 and Chamara Kaugedara got out after putting up 27 runs.

The second ODI will be played on Wednesday, 22nd Jan. I strongly recommend you ScoresPro.com so you don't miss cricket 2009 results as it's going to be every bit as thrilling as this match.

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