Malinga back to cause mayhem

Sri Lanka have not been hurried into introducing Lasith Malinga to the World Cup fray but the dynamo with the shock of two-tone locks made up for lost time on Tuesday with a stunning performance topped by a hat-trick.

Malinga is making a habit of taking consecutive wickets in the 50-over game’s showpiece event — he rolled over four South Africans on the trot in the last tournament in 2007.

This time, he had the relative easy targets of tail-end Kenyan batsmen in his sights and like an expert marksman shooting wooden ducks in a fairground stall, he knocked them over one after the other, barely pausing to take aim.

That low, slingshot action of his returned figures of 6-38 as Kenya crumbled from a relatively promising position to 142 all out, a total which Sri Lanka knocked off with nine wickets and 188 balls to spare in Group A.

Those runs were expertly accomplished by Upul Tharanga (67 not out from 59 balls), Tillakaratne Dilshan (44) and Kumar Sangakkara (27 not out) but there was only one man hogging the limelight at the R Premadasa Stadium.

Malinga had been rested for the co-hosts’ opening games, a 210-run romp over Canada and a surprise 11-run defeat by Pakistan on Saturday, because of a sore back.

UNIQUELY DIFFICULT

If he was still struggling with the odd twinge on Tuesday there was certainly no obvious sign — certainly not from where the hapless Kenyans were standing.

As ever for a man who presents almost uniquely difficult problems for tail-enders, Malinga saved his best until last after sending back Seren Waters (3), Collins Obuya (52) earlier in the innings, leg before and bowled respectively.

At the end of his seventh over, a Malinga special — fast, full and swerving like a guided missile for the batsman’s toes — caught Tanmay Mishra in front lbw without scoring.

Malinga, sensing a quick kill, returned in the next over to deliver carbon copies and in quick succession went the stumps of Peter Ongondo and Shem Ngoche without either troubling the scorers.

Last man Elijah Otieno, with the air of a man facing the inevitable, survived a couple of wayward Malinga deliveries before another super yorker sent him packing too, clean bowled.

Suddenly Sri Lanka, beaten more convincingly than the 11-run margin of defeat against Pakistan suggests, look a force to be reckoned with again in a competition they are co-hosting with India and Bangladesh.

Pakistan may have been interested to learn afterwards that a couple of their past expert exponents in the dark art of delivering high-speed, reverse-swinging yorkers encouraged the 27-year-old from Galle to master this most deadly of balls.

“When I came to cricket, I didn’t know anything about yorkers,” he told a news conference.

“But I have seen Pakistan matches and how Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis bowl like that. After seeing that I really liked that and I also wanted to bowl like them.”

Ominously for the rest of the 13 teams in the competition, Malinga added that he was sure he could play the rest of the Cup without problem from his back.

“The medical advice for the sore back was to get rest for three weeks,” he said.

“I could have played the second match as I was partially fit. But had I played, I could have injured myself in the fielding and I would have not bowled like this. It’s good that I didn’t play in the second game.”

Pakistan would certainly agree with that sentiment while Kenya return to their camp to lick their wounds after a third successive heavy defeat following a 10-wicket reverse to New Zealand and a 205-run loss to Pakistan.

In fairness, this was their most competent performance and Collins Obuya (52) and brother David (51) put together a fraternal partnership of 94 for the third wicket which had left them sitting relatively pretty at 102-2 before the cave-in came.

Equally, in the field, they tried as hard as they could but were simply outclassed although Otieno, the pick of their bowlers, managed to induce an edge off a short ball from Dilshan for a caught behind and their sole success.

At least the Africans could reflect that in this mood, Malinga would have caused considerable problems for even the most proficient of batsmen. This was a warning for them all.