Australia Vs Sri Lanka Final

A side that had rewritten the opening overs

Sri Lanka went into the 1996 World Cup final having already changed the way one-day cricket was played that tournament. Under Arjuna Ranatunga, and with Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana opening the batting with orders to attack the fielding restrictions in the first fifteen overs, they had turned games that other sides treated cautiously into fast starts. It was a method that unsettled bowling attacks built for a slower opening, and Australia, the defending finalists from four years earlier and playing their third World Cup final in six tournaments, were the last side standing between Sri Lanka and the trophy.

The final was held at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on 17 March 1996. Sri Lanka's route there had already been unusual: earlier in the tournament, both Australia and West Indies had forfeited their group matches against Sri Lanka in Colombo over security concerns, handing Sri Lanka both results without a ball being bowled, and in the semi-final Sri Lanka beat India at Eden Gardens in Kolkata after the match was abandoned amid crowd trouble and awarded to them. Australia had come through a tense semi-final of their own against the West Indies in Mohali. Both sides arrived in Lahore having navigated very different, but equally fraught, paths to the final.

Ranatunga bowls first

Arjuna Ranatunga won the toss and chose to field, a decision built around bowling under lights and chasing on a pitch that was expected to get harder to score on as the match went on. It went against the pattern Sri Lanka had set through the tournament of batting first and attacking from the opening over, but Ranatunga judged that his side was better suited to chasing a target on this particular surface. Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh opened for Australia, and while Waugh was out for 12, caught off Chaminda Vaas, Taylor batted through the middle overs, adding 101 for the second wicket with Ricky Ponting.

Taylor and Ponting build 241

Taylor made 74 from 83 balls before he was caught, and Ponting followed with 45 before he was bowled, the pair having given Australia a platform at 152 for 3. From there the innings lost momentum against Sri Lanka's spin and medium pace: Shane Warne was stumped off Kumar Dharmasena for only 2, Steve Waugh caught for 13, and Stuart Law caught for 22, three wickets falling for 50 runs in the space of a few overs. Only Michael Bevan, unbeaten on 36, and Paul Reiffel, unbeaten on 13, added any late impetus in the closing overs. Australia finished on 241 for 7 from their fifty overs, a total built more on Taylor and Ponting's platform than on any late acceleration.

Sri Lanka's bowling in that innings showed the same variety that had troubled sides all tournament. Sanath Jayasuriya, better known for his batting, bowled 8 overs of left-arm spin for the wicket of Steve Waugh, and the seamer Chaminda Vaas kept things tight through the new-ball overs. The most economical bowling of the innings came from Muthiah Muralidaran, who went at just 3.1 an over across his full ten, with Kumar Dharmasena almost as tight at 4.7, a disciplined display that kept Australia to a total below what they had managed in most of their earlier matches that World Cup.

De Silva's three wickets

Aravinda de Silva took 3 for 42 from his nine overs in that innings, the best bowling figures on either side, removing three Australian batters as the innings stalled after its brisk start. He was the last of Sri Lanka's six bowling options used that day, brought on well into the innings, and struck at a stage when Australia had looked capable of pushing well past 250. It meant de Silva had already shaped the final before Sri Lanka had batted a single over in reply, a rare instance of a player influencing a World Cup final with both bat and ball in the same match.

Gurusinha and de Silva chase

Sri Lanka's reply began exactly as their tournament had, with intent from the first ball. Sanath Jayasuriya made 9 from 7 balls before he was run out, and Romesh Kaluwitharana was caught for 6, leaving Sri Lanka 23 for 2 inside the first six overs, the fast start that had defined their tournament cut short early. It was Asanka Gurusinha and Aravinda de Silva who then rebuilt the innings, adding 125 for the third wicket against Glenn McGrath, Damien Fleming, Shane Warne and Paul Reiffel, batting through the middle overs with a mix of caution and calculated aggression. Gurusinha made 65 from 99 balls before he was bowled by Paul Reiffel, and de Silva went on to play the innings of the tournament for Sri Lanka, reaching his century and finishing unbeaten on 107 from 124 balls. Shane Warne, who had troubled batters throughout the tournament, went for 58 runs from his ten overs without taking a wicket, and Glenn McGrath, though he conceded only 28 from 8.2 overs, could not find a breakthrough either.

Ranatunga finishes it

Arjuna Ranatunga came in at the fall of the third wicket and finished the match alongside de Silva, making an unbeaten 47 from 37 balls. The pair added the winning runs with seven wickets in hand and 22 balls unused, Sri Lanka reaching 245 for 3. Aravinda de Silva, with a century and three wickets in the same final, was named player of the match.

What the final changed

The win made Sri Lanka world champions for the first time, and the template of aggressive opening batting that Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana had used through the tournament went on to influence how the fifty-over game was played well beyond 1996. The full scorecard from Lahore, including every partnership and bowling figure, is on this page, and the two finalists can be explored on the Australia and Sri Lanka team pages. In The Chase you can take either side into a match of your own and see whether you can match de Silva's final.

Sources

• CricArcade World Cup archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
• ESPNcricinfo: 1996 World Cup final scorecard and report
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1997: the World Cup in the subcontinent