West Indies VS Sri Lanka ODI Series
3rd Match Played at North Sounds on 15 March 2021
West Indies 276/5 in 48.3 Overs (Daren Bravo 102, Shai Hope 64, Keiron Pollard 53*, Suranga Lakmal 2/56) 
Sri Lanka 274/6 (PWH de Silva 80*, Ashen Bandara 55*, Danuska Gunathilaka 36, Dimukh Karunaratne 31, Akeal Hosein 3/33) 
West Indies won by 5 Wickets
West Indies won the series 3-0 
Player of the Series: Daren Bravo
Player of The Series: Shai Hope

West Indies winning the three ODI matches on the trot Brown Washed Sri Lanka. Batting first Sri Lanka could post a challenging target of 274/6 in their allotted overs. Playing sensibly and pacing their innings well West Indies got across scoring 276/5 in 48.3 overs.

It is always great watching recover their habits of winning matches. In recent times despite of having so many power hitters, movers and shakers in limited over franchise world over they were not winning many. 

Roger Harper as Chief Selector and Phil Simmons as the head coach has created new enthusiasm in the team. In the recent past their most successful captain and father figure to West Indies Cricket Sir Clive Lloyd wrote a letter of inspiration to an understrength team of many fresher visiting Bangladesh reminding them the glory and honor of representing a team having glorious past. That team was white washed by strong Bangladesh in ODI series. But inspired by his words they bounced back and with too many rookies brown washed Bangladesh in the Test Series. Now in West Indies leading players including some senior pros got back to the team with eyes for T20 and ODI world cups in sight. They won T20 series 2-1 and now ODI 3-0 against Sri Lanka which itself is also struggling to find ground under their feet. 

The outstanding feature of the days play was the calm and cool batting of Daren Bravo scoring his 4th ODI century (102) after a while. His 132 balls 102 was well paced and almost lasted till the finish. His partner in the winning pursuit was his captain power hitter Keiron Pollard who carved his attacking stint to suit the condition. His unbeaten 53 in 42 deliveries put the icing on the cake. All these were done after Shai Hope the most inspirational Caribbean batsmen produced yet another classy 64 while opening the innings. Sri Lankan bowlers bowled steadily. But could not break the resolve of Bravo and Pollard.

Earlier put to bat Sri Lanka could not create momentum in the most part of their innings despite of a solid opening partnership of 68 between Gunatilaka (36) and Karunaratne (31). Once they were dismissed Sri Lankan innings lost their way losing few wickets and runs dried out. The innings looked in disarray at 6/ 151 in the 31.5 overs. From there on Ashen Bandara (55*) and PWH de Silva (89*) playing aggressively gave Sri Lanka a competitive score of 274/6. 

Cannot say West Indies bowled at all smartly in the closing overs. Gone are the Caribbean trademarks toe crushing Yorkers of fearsome pacers. If West Indies has to win matches regularly against big teams the skills of its golden days iconic fast bowlers knocking the base of the stumps at death overs must return.

Anyway, winning and earning comprehensive series victory always brings joy. Hopefully West Indies Cricket would get back to right track soon. Sri Lanka needs lots of irony. But can say that they also had some positives in the series. 

BDST: 1148 HRS, MAR 15, 2021
SMS