England Sink Sri Lanka as Jacks Leads Super Eight Turnaround<\/p>\n
KANDY, Sri Lanka, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Will Jacks impressed with bat and ball to rescue England from a poor start and help them to a 51-run victory over Sri Lanka in a low-scoring Super Eight match at the Twenty20 World Cup on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Tournament co-hosts Sri Lanka appeared to be well set after restricting England to a below-par 146-9 in the Group 2 match at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium.<\/p>\n
Jacks, who made 21 useful runs down the order, returned to claim 3-22 as England bowled out Sri Lanka for 95 inside 17 overs to prevail.<\/p>\n
Player of the Match Quotes<\/p>\n
“It encourages me to get into the game and perform better,”\u00a0player of the match Jacks said.<\/p>\n
“Bowling in the powerplay is something I’ve done a lot of. So it’s not foreign to me.”<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Batting Wobbles Early<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka elected to field after winning the toss and had reasons to feel vindicated as England slumped to 68-4 at the halfway mark of their innings.<\/p>\n
Jos Buttler’s 14-ball struggle ended when he was trapped lbw for seven after attempting a reverse shot against spinner Dunith Wellalage only to miss a ball that rapped him on the pad.<\/p>\n
Spinner Maheesh Theekshana dismissed the in-form Jacob Bethell for three and Tom Banton perished in his pursuit of a risky single, beaten by Shanaka’s direct throw from mid-off.<\/p>\n
Brook\u2019s Unsuccessful Review<\/p>\n
Harry Brook made 14 before Wellalage dismissed him lbw, a decision the England captain challenged but could not overturn.<\/p>\n
Phil Salt\u2019s Quickfire 62<\/p>\n
Phil Salt (62) raced to a 36-ball fifty but holed out in the 15th over to give Wellalage his third wicket of the match.<\/p>\n
Jacks added late runs\u00a0but England fell short of the 150-mark.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka\u2019s Chase Collapses<\/p>\n
They needed a lion-hearted bowling effort and produced one to reduce Sri Lanka to 22-4 inside five overs.<\/p>\n
Archer and Jacks Strike Early<\/p>\n
Jacks dismissed Kusal Mendis and Pavan Rathnayake off successive deliveries after Jofra Archer had sent back Sri Lanka’s in-form opener Pathum Nissanka.<\/p>\n
Archer removed Kamil Mishara and Sri Lanka slumped to 34-5 after Wellalage became Jacks’ third victim.<\/p>\n
The hosts could never really recover and several frontline batters fell to soft dismissals.<\/p>\n
Hit-Wicket Highlights Struggles<\/p>\n
Dushan Hemantha’s bizarre hit-wicket dismissal for five summed up Sri Lanka’s batting.<\/p>\n
Shanaka made a defiant 30 but Jacks relayed a catch in the deep to remove the Sri Lanka captain and effectively seal England’s victory.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England Sink Sri Lanka as Jacks Leads Super Eight Turnaround KANDY, Sri Lanka, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,250230,250226,250222,250229,250228,250227,250225,85,250223,250224],"class_list":["post-496836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-dunith-wellalage-wickets","tag-england-146-9-scorecard","tag-england-vs-sri-lanka-super-8","tag-jofra-archer-wickets","tag-kandy-t20-match-report","tag-pallekele-international-cricket-stadium","tag-phil-salt-62","tag-sports","tag-t20-world-cup-2026-group-2","tag-will-jacks-3-22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}