Close Sri Lanka 40 for 1 beat Zimbabwe 38 all out (Vaas 8-19) by 9 wickets
Scorecard

Records galore tumbled at the SSC in Colombo as Sri Lanka trounced Zimbabwe in an extraordinary match that lasted just 20 overs.

In the first match of a triangular series that also involves West Indies, Zimbabwe were dismissed for just 38, a new one-day low, with Chaminda Vaas taking a record 8 for 19. It didn't end there: Sri Lanka raced to victory in just 4.2 overs, and the match aggregate (78), the length of Zimbabwe's innings (15.4 overs) as well as the length of the match (20 overs) were all records, while Vaas took the first one-day hat-trick by a Sri Lankan.

Most of the broken records came from the match between Pakistan and West Indies at Cape Town in 1992-93. Then, Pakistan were routed for 43 in only 19.5 overs, with a match aggregate of 88 in 32.2 overs.

Things started badly for Zimbabwe here and just got worse. Dion Ebrahim was lbw to the first ball of the match, a yorker from Vaas (peculiarly, in that match between Pakistan and West Indies, Ramiz Raja and Des Haynes were dismissed by the first ball of each innings), and when Vaas dismissed the Flower brothers in the space of three deliveries in his third over, Zimbabwe were 11 for 3.

With Stuart Carlisle, the only man to reach double figures, playing a captain's innings of sorts, Zimbabwe moved to 27 for 3 in the 11th over before Vaas got to work again.

He had Carlisle taken by Suresh Perera at third man for 16 before trapping Craig Wishart and Tatenda Taibu lbw with his next two deliveries. Vaas's hat-trick was only the second by a Sri Lankan in international cricket - Nuwan Zoysa took one against Zimbabwe in the second Test at Harare in 1999-2000.

In Vaas's next over Heath Streak became the fourth man to fall lbw, and the fourth man to go for nought, when he played all round an inswinger (29 for 7). Two overs later, when Mluleki Nkala was caught behind for 1 (32 for 8), Vaas had 8 for 14 and eyes for all ten. He had shattered the previous record, Muttiah Muralitharan's 7 for 30 against India at Sharjah in 2000-01.

But with Zoysa, whose figures of 7-2-17-0 would have been outstanding in any other context, playing Martin Peters to Vaas's Geoff Hurst, Sanath Jayasuriya handed the ball to Muralitharan, who needed all of four deliveries to wrap things up.

Travis Friend was bowled by a trademark delivery that spat back a long way from outside off stump (38 for 9) and two balls later Henry Olonga edged to Mahela Jayawardene at slip. Murali ended with figures of 0.4-0-1-2, but the star of the show was undoubtedly Vaas (8-3-19-8), who with 14 wickets in the third Test against West Indies has had one of the more fruitful weeks in international cricket history.

Having been skittled for 38, Zimbabwe probably thought things couldn't get any worse, but Sri Lanka rubbed salt in the wound by racing to 40 for 1 off just 26 balls. Worse still, the great stonewaller Marvan Atapattu did most of the damage with an unbeaten 23 off 16 balls, and he and Sanath Jayasuriya finished things off with four consecutive fours. Only 108 minutes had passed since Vaas trapped Ebrahim with the first ball of the match.

At least Heath Streak averted a ten-wicket defeat by trapping Avishka Gunawardene lbw, but consolations don't come much smaller. Zimbabwe are in total disarray, and excluding matches against Bangladesh, they have now lost 22 one-dayers in a row. The days of hat-tricks from chicken farmers and 3-0 whitewashes of England seem a long time ago.

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