There is something riveting about last-ball finishes that you struggle to describe in mere words. The whole nation’s eyes seemed to be zoomed in on Charith Asalanka as Zaman Khan braced himself to bowl the final delivery. Despite the weight of the nation on his shoulders, Asalanka nonchalantly skipped down the deck and collected a double behind square on the on side. His calmness under pressure was a story within a story in a game where the pendulum swung back and forth numerous times.
“I just thought how can I get two to hit in the gap and run hard because it’s a big field,” Asalanka said about his last-over heroics after the Sri Lanka-Pakistan game. “I told Matheesha to run very hard and we’ll try to get two runs.”
His 47-ball 49 was about how he peppered steel with style and supplemented it with tactical smarts to take his team home. Despite Sri Lanka’s middle and lower-order batters falling to Iftikhar Ahmed’s part-time spin and Shaheen Shah Afridi, Asalanka didn’t press the panic button. He calmly collected his runs through a series of nudges and nurdles. And when needed, he struck the occasional big shot to put the pressure back on the bowlers.
To understand the essence of Asalanka’s batting, just run through the 39th over bowled by Afridi. Afridi rolled his fingers across the ball in order to outmanoeuvre his opponent. However, Asalanka was equal to the task. He watched Afridi’s wrist action and seemed to pick the slower one early, as he calmly deposited it down the ground.
As soon as the ball crashed into the hoardings, there were deafening cheers in the stadium. All the noise could have affected another batter in the middle, but Asalanka seemed to be in his own zone. Incidentally, after scoring a boundary, he once more showed batting smarts as he calmly dug out a yorker to steal another run.
It is true that the rub of the green went his way. In the last over, he outside-edged one to the third man boundary. He was also dropped by Mohammad Rizwan off Iftikhar. But in a cauldron of tensions, you need that bit of luck to cross the final hurdle.
This isn’t the first time that Asalanka has come to Sri Lanka’s rescue. A couple of years ago, he held the innings together amid a major collapse against South Africa. Last year, his hundred powered Sri Lanka to what turned out to be a match-winning total against Australia. Then there was a 73-ball unbeaten 84 against Afghanistan, as he helped Sri Lanka ace a 314-run target.
In a couple of days’ time, Sri Lanka will take on India at the Premadasa in the Asia Cup final. The onus would again be on Asalanka, alongside Kusal Mendis and Sadeera Samarawickrama, to provide heft to the batting unit. In front of a home crowd, the threesome have a chance to do something special, which in turn would reverberate across the Island nation for years to come.