Sri Lanka’s only tour match before their three-Test series against Australia ended in a draw in Canberra yesterday when they declared on 396-6 at lunch on day three.
The tourists still trailed the 439-6 made by the Chairman’s XI but both sides agreed to bring an end to a high-scoring match on a Manuka Oval wicket that offered little to the bowlers.
Tillakaratne Dilshan, who retired unbeaten after reaching his century, top-scored for Sri Lanka with Prasanna Jayawardene (71), Dinesh Chandimal (57) and Kumar Sangakkara (55) also making half centuries.
Photo: EPA
New South Wales left-hander Scott Henry plundered an unbeaten 207 in the Chairman’s XI innings, while Test aspirant and captain Usman Khawaja made 56 before he was withdrawn from the match to play in the domestic Twenty20 competition.
“It was a good wicket and a good practice match as all the batsmen managed to get a good hit,” wicketkeeper Jayawardene told reporters. “I think we’ll get a different wicket from this in the Test matches and I think our bowlers did okay.”
Tasmanian allrounder Luke Butterworth said the Sri Lankans were in for a surprise when they arrive at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart for the first Test, which starts on Friday.
“Yeah, it might be a bit of a shock,” Butterworth said, pointing out they will need to spend plenty of time adjusting on the practice wickets.”
“I think they’ll adapt but it’s definitely going to be a lot different to the wicket out here [in Canberra],” he said.
“[The wicket] was pretty flat when I left there. I think [curator Marcus Pamplin] is going to put a fair bit of work into it,” Butterworth said.
“There’ll be a fair bit in it, day one, but I don’t think it’s going to be a typical Sheffield Shield wicket when 20 wickets fell in two days,” he said.
Butterworth was full of praise for Sri Lanka’s powerful batting line-up.
“They batted really well,” he said. “You can tell they’re a high-class batting team. They showed that out there and it was tough to knock them over.”
The tourists, who have never won a Test in Australia, also play matches in Melbourne and Sydney.
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