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Sri Lanka played in the opening game of the tournament against Bangladesh and were thoroughly outplayed by 137 runs. After the huge loss in the opening encounter, the only chance that the island nation had was to beat Afghanistan, but the Afghan cricketers had completely different plans.
After winning the toss, Afghanistan put on a decent total of 249 in 50 overs. The man of the match, Rahmat Shah, who scored 72 runs was aided by useful contributions from other batsmen and they set a target of 250 in front of Sri Lanka to stay alive in the tournament.
Sri Lanka, who had a poor outing with the bat in the opening match, did not show any improvement in their second match too. Upul Tharanga with his 64-ball 36 was the highest scorer during the chase. The poor running between the wickets added salt to the wounds created by the abysmal display of batting.
The Afghan spin trio of Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi strangled the Lankan batting with two wickets each and helped their side win the match by 91 runs. As a result of the huge win, Afghanistan and Bangladesh make it to the super fours and Sri Lanka head back home without playing a single match against India and Pakistan.
Here's how the World reacted to Sri Lanka's exit:
Angelo Mathews, Sri Lankan captain:
It was a shocking performance by the whole team. Even in the first game, we could not breach 150 but congratulations to Afghanistan. They outplayed us in all the three departments. The whole batting line-up let us down in both the matches.
Chasing 250, bowlers did their part in the first game as well as in this game. We were off to a bad start while batting but we repaired a little bit for the second wicket. We once again lost our way in the middle overs and we didn't have answers.
I thought the bowlers did well, in fielding we were better than the last game. It was just the batting unit to be blamed. It is shocking. We played better cricket against South Africa towards the latter part of the series.
It is very disappointing to see how the boys went about things, in the first game as well as in this game. We repeated the mistakes, we just couldn't handle pressure and we were nowhere near our good performance. Handling pressures was crucial, failing to cross 150 in both the matches (sic) is very shocking and disappointing.
Asghar Afghan, Afghanistan captain:
Very important game because Sri Lanka lost their first game. Credit to our batsmen, our openers, they played very well. Every batsman executed plans. Yesterday we spoke about partnerships. Very important thing for us.
Credit to our fielders who fielded very well. We want to win, show our abilities and talent. When you want to play cricket just for winning, shows positive intent. We'll see (about winning the Asia Cup). If we give good target on board, our spinners are bowling well. Nowadays our spinners are famous around the world. Want to thank the crowd.
Mohammad Nabi:
Harsha Bhogle:
Virender Sehwag:
Aakash Chopra:
Aftab Alam:
Mohammad Kaif:
VVS Laxman:
Dean Jones:
Shafiq Stanikzai:
Ayaz Menon:
Karim Sadiq:
Gaurav Sethi:
Twitter also took a jibe at Russell Arnold:
Some interesting tweets from Twitter:
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