Sri Lanka's Chaminda Vaas took 5-31 yesterday and moved into the upper echelon of test bowlers as 13 wickets fell on a wild first day of the first cricket test against Australia.
Australia was bowled out for 207 shortly after tea, after being sent in to bat. Sri Lanka was 43-3 in reply at stumps.
It has been more than a decade since Australia was bowled out with such a low total when batting first in a home test match. That came against the West Indies in 1992-93 at the WACA in Perth when Australia could only manage 119.
PHOTO: AFP
The absence of world record wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan opened the door for Vaas, who moved to 251 test wickets -- passing Richie Benaud (248) and Michael Holding (249), and moved him into the top 25 wicket-takers of all-time.
"I'm not trying to do anything special," Vaas said yesterday. "My game is to swing the ball and I try to keep the ball in the right spot. Today it was ideal conditions for fast bowlers as the ball was seaming around."
Australian vice-captain Darren Lehmann praised Vaas.
PHOTO: AFP
"He bowled beautifully all day, he swung it nicely, it was hard to get him away ... he contained us very well," Lehmann said.
Vaas said captain Marvan Atapattu's decision to bowl first was based on the pitch offering plenty of assistance to the pace bowlers. But early on the gamble appeared to have backfired as Matthew Hayden (37) and Justin Langer (30) added 72 for the first wicket.
On either side of the lunch break Australia lost 3-8 with Vaas claiming the wickets of Hayden and Matthew Elliott, who made one run after being rushed into the team to replace Ricky Ponting after the skipper chose to miss the match following a death in his family.
Australia had a middle-session revival as Lehmann (57) and Damien Martyn (47) added 97 for the fourth wicket. But Martyn's fall on the last ball before tea started a collapse of 7-30.
Lasith Malinga, 20, took two vital wickets on debut, trapping Lehmann leg before wicket. Three balls later he dismissed acting captain Adam Gilchrist, who was caught down the legside for a duck.
Vaas then cleaned up the tail for his eighth five-wicket haul in his 77th test.
While Vaas reached the landmark of 250 wickets, Australian fast bowlers Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie also reached personal milestones as Sri Lanka lost two quick wickets in its pursuit of a first-innings lead.
McGrath, making a return from a yearlong injury layoff, clean bowled Atapattu (4) to move alongside New Zealand's Richard Hadlee on 431 test wickets. He passed Hadlee and went to fifth on the all-time wicket-taker's list with an leg-before shout against Sanath Jayasuriya (8).
Gillespie reached 200 test wickets when he trapped Kumar Sangakkara (2) lbw. At stumps Mahela Jayawardene was not out on 12 and nightwatchman Nuwan Zoysa was on eight.
Lehmann said the Marrara Oval pitch wasn't quite up to test standard.
"They bowled quite well but the wicket's not ideal," Lehmann said.
"But then you can't have flat wickets all the time -- it just gives the batters more of a challenge and we didn't rise to the challenge well enough."
Lehmann said he'd never encountered a bowler like Malinga, who is short for a fast bowler and bowls with an almost sidearm action.
"He's so small and he's a real slinger, I've never come across someone like that before," said Lehmann. "It's hard to pick [the line of the ball], especially with the variable bounce. But he certainly lets them go -- he's got some pace."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier