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On 28th March in Guyana, in the course of ninth world cup, Lasith Malinga of Sri Lanka almost choked the South Africans.

Malinga scared the devils out of Proteas when they were certain to win their crucial super eight match against Sri Lanka. Cricket is surely a funny and ironic game, and anything is possible on any given day and its hard to predict the results, but when a team has five wickets in hand with just four runs to win, its hard to not to predict. But when Malinga took 4 wickets on 4 balls, it was then, when it was hard to predict. Robin Peterson and Charl Langeveldt, after facing 11 hellish deliveries, somehow managed to secure those Everest four runs.

Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene, elected to bat first after winning the toss and hopped on to a complex bandwidth. Top and middle order didn’t come out spectacularly and Uppal Tharanga, Sanath Jayasuriya, Jayawardene, Sangakkara and Chamara Silva all went out cheaply, some in their 20’s and some even below it. Decency was brought to Sri Lankan’s innings by Dilshan and Russell Arnold, when they established a record partnership of 96 runs. Arnold scored 50 on 99 balls and Dilshan managed to reach 58 on 100 balls with 4 4’s. Rest was just eyewash. After a mesmerizing bowling and fielding by Proteas, Sri Lanka managed to post a total of 209, which was considered just fine as per conditions.

Initially Sri Lankans gave respect to Ntini but targeted Shaun Pollock for their savageness due to his predictability of bowling spots, but the continuous dismissals and Charl Langeveldt superb bowling wiped out Sri Lankan’s hope of fun and huge score. Langeveldt was the pick of the bowlers along with leopard Ntini. Langeveldt took 5 star wickets in 10 overs with economy less than 4. Ntini picked 2 and Hall grabbed 1 wicket along the way.

Cautious start by mercurial Graeme Smith and the early exit of AB de Villiers boosted the Sri Lankan moral, but with the passage of time premier Jacques Kallis and Smith solidified African position by scoring 59 and 86 runs respectively. Smith’s was a mixture of caution and aggression. For his 59 runs on 65 balls, he hit 1 grand six and 7 pretty fours. Gibbs also contributed with 31 useful runs. The quadruple dismissals by Malinga raised the hopes for Lankan but to the good fortune of Proteas, Peterson managed to get a lucky boundary. South Africa won while 10 balls and 1 wicket were left.