Australia
 India
 Sri Lanka

 Series
 Aust v India
 Aust v SL
 India v SL
 One-Day Int'l

 Colombo (RPS)
 Colombo (SSC)
 Galle

IT'S SRI LANKA'S CUP AS A WITHERING 'WITHARANA LEADS THE WAY:

In a match of surprises at the Premadesa Stadium, Sri Lanka has conjured a stunning seven wicket victory over previously unbeaten Australia to clinch the 1999 Aiwa Cup Final in Colombo tonight.  Achieved by virtue of a convincing team performance, it was a triumph which underlined the home team's capacity to utilise conditions in this part of the world to great effect as well an emphatic ability throughout this tournament to cast aside a series of disappointments over recent months.

Ironically, for the current World Champions (who headed into this match with the opportunity to equal England's all-time world record streak of twelve one-day internationals without defeat), this match bore many similarities to the 1996 World Cup Final - a match in which Australia batted first, started well before losing its way badly against Sri Lanka's slower bowlers, and then succumbed to a masterful show of strokemaking.  Indeed, after their captain Steve Waugh seemed to have secured a significant early advantage for his team by winning the toss and electing to bat on a pitch that looked full of runs, the Australians were never able today to recapture the form which had seen them win each of their previous four games in this triangular series.

To a very large degree, the Australians' undoing today was initiated by some superb spin bowling through the middle stages of the afternoon from Upul Chandana and Muttiah Muralitharan.  After Australia had made a steady start, Chandana (2/29 from ten overs) and Muralitharan (2/36 from his ten) unleashed spells which both dignified and magnified an afternoon that had been reduced to relative mundanity under a baking Colombo sun prior to their respective arrivals at their bowling crease.  Muralitharan struck the duo's first significant blow when he conceived a prodigiously turning off break to send a delivery straight past the flashing blade of Mark Waugh (32) in the seventeenth over.  And then, after Steve Waugh (43) and Darren Lehmann (21) had appeared to be once again balancing the scales with a steadfast partnership of 51 for the fourth wicket, Chandana struck even more decisively in the thirty-fourth over, removing both the latter and Michael Bevan (0) in successive balls as they launched horrible-looking shots at his deceptive leg spin.  Chandana and Muralitharan's class and control, Sanath Jayasuriya's imaginative leadership, and some magnificent out-cricket, clearly unsettled the Australians and their final mark of 202 (they lost their tenth wicket from the very last ball of the innings) was a target which was not sufficiently imposing to afford them any degree of comfort by the halfway mark.

This was a reality which then received even more emphatic expression as the home team's batsmen, led by a wonderfully authoritative innings from Romesh Kaluwitharana (95*), never allowed their opponents a passage back into the match.  Relishing a recall to the opening spot, Kaluwitharana brilliantly assumed control of the evening session of the match, constructing his best one day international innings for some time and even apparently weathering a ferocious barrage of sledging from a clearly frustrated Glenn McGrath in the process.  His most effective shots were played through the off side (several magnificent cuts and cover drives featuring prominently) but, in truth, he engineered strokes to most parts of the ground in a commanding display.  He received grand support from each of the three partners by whom he was joined - Marvan Atapattu (24), Russel Arnold (47) and Jayasuriya (26*) also largely untroubled during their respective occupations at the crease.  In short, it was a marvellously emphatic pursuit of a total that was never so imposing that it could unduly bother them; the extent of the Sri Lankans' dominance reflected in the notion that there were as many as sixty-four balls still available to them when Jayasuriya swung Lehmann high over the mid wicket boundary for the winning runs.  By contrast, the Australian captain and his teammates struggled to find any real inspiration; the implementation of some generally unremarkable bowling changes, the setting of conventional fields, and some unnecessarily persistent hotheadedness from McGrath, the main features of a disappointing exhibition.

Accordingly, Sri Lanka's marvellous team effort, together with the previously all-conquering Australians' loss at just the wrong time in this tournament, combined to make for a fascinating conclusion to this tournament.  In front of a crowd which understandably revelled in their team's triumph, it was also a day on which the Aiwa Cup champions illustrated perfectly that, no matter how great the sense of inexperience and lack of confidence which they might be forced to overcome at the outset, the qualities of enthusiasm and exuberance can often stir a team to great success.