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Lanka gear up for 'big one' today
Bernie Wijesekera reporting from Dambulla
Sri Lanka geared themselves up for their 'big one" against India today when they powered into an impressive 116 run win over the Asia Cup minnows, the United Arab Emirates in their first round encounter at the Rangiri Dambulla Stadium, yesterday.

In reply to Sri Lanka's total of 239, the visitors did not have very many answers to the experienced home team attack as they crumbled to 123 all out in 47.5 overs. For Sri Lanka it was the off spin-leg spin combination of Muralitheran and Chandana who formed themselves into an deadly duo sharing seven wickets at the cost of only 43 runs in 19.5 overs. Muralitheran finished with 3 for 21 in his allotted ten overs while Chandana had 4 for 22 in 9.5 overs. Opener Ramveer Rai scratched for 137 balls to score 39 runs, but, was the only UAE batsman to show any form of resistance to the Lankan bowling which looked very penetrative against the weaker batting line up.

Earlier in the day Sri Lanka propped by a fighting knock of 73 by one drop batsman Avishka Gunawardena huffed and puffed their way to 239 all out at the end of their allotted 50 overs.

After Sri Lanka had rested their senior duo of skipper Marvan Atapattu and work horse Chaminda Vaas never looked at ease on the crease after acting captain Mahela Jayawardena elected to bat on winning the toss. First they lost opener Saman Jayantha who was flown in from England to join the senior team since he had a good run with the bat over there. Nevertheless Jayantha failed to take advantage of this chance as he played and missed at Syed Maqsood and was bowled for 18 with the score at 39.

Then Sri Lanka's most reliable batsman at present Kumar Sangakkara joining Gunawardena saw the score passing the one hundred mark with a 64 run stand for the third wicket in which Sangakkara's contribution was 17. Finally when Gunawardena was caught at the deep mid on Sameer Zia who brought off a superb catch off the bowling of his skipper Khuram Khan he had made 73 runs in an 89 ball stay and had hit nine fours and also see the score move from 39 for 1 to 7 for 190. The UAE on their part waved a magic wand. They kept to the basics of bowling. They bowled line and length and made the Sri Lankan batsmen make the mistakes on a wicket that is not conducive at all for attractive batting.

For the visitors captain Khuram Khan bowled best to finish with impressive figures of 4 for 32 in his ten overs for which he won the man of the match award.

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