From 21 for 4 to a Medal: Tharindu Ratnayake Turns Sri Lanka's Bronze-Medal Morning Around

There is a version of this morning that Sri Lanka will have feared. Forty-eight hours after 45 all out against India, they chose to bat, and by the fourth over they were 21 for 4 — four of their top six gone, one of them run out, and the old questions about this batting line-up being asked all over again. A bronze-medal match is an odd thing to play: nobody dreams of it, and everybody remembers who came home with nothing.

Sri Lanka will not be the ones coming home with nothing. Sri Lanka 165 for 9. Bangladesh 102 all out in 17.3 overs. Tharindu Ratnayake, who had scratched 5 from 15 balls in the semi-final, made 65 from 32 with seven fours and five sixes, put on 93 for the sixth wicket with Sahan Arachchige, and then took 2 for 18 with the ball. Bangladesh lost their first three wickets for four runs, Saif Hassan, Tanzid Hasan and Litton Das all out for nought, and never recovered. Sri Lanka won by 63 runs and the bronze medal.

The start was as bad as anything in the semi-final. Wickets fell at 7, 12, 18 and 21 inside four overs, Sohan de Livera run out for 6 among them, and Sri Lanka's powerplay finished at 29 for 4. Sahan Arachchige and Ashen Bandara then did the necessary, unglamorous work of surviving — the score was 51 for 4 at drinks — and when Bandara was caught for 18 in the 11th over, Sri Lanka were 54 for 5 and looking at something around 120.

Ratnayake changed that. The fifty of the sixth-wicket stand came in 26 balls, and Ratnayake had 33 of them. He reached his own fifty from 26 balls, and by the time he was caught in the 19th over the partnership was worth 93 and the score was 147. Sri Lanka made 114 from their last ten overs, having made 51 from their first ten. Arachchige's part in it should not be overlooked: 33 from 37 balls is not a pretty strike rate, but he stood at the other end from the fourth over to the 20th, and you need someone to do that when the top order has gone.

The innings fell away again at the end — three more wickets for 18 runs after Ratnayake's dismissal — but by then the job was done. One more thing worth noting: Bangladesh gave away 22 extras, which was the third-highest contribution to the Sri Lankan total, behind Ratnayake and Arachchige.

Bangladesh's bowling for much of the morning was good. Mahedi Hasan took 2 for 19 in four overs, Al Islam 1 for 18 in four, Nasum Ahmed two overs for 8 — ten overs for 45 between them, at a time when Sri Lanka were in trouble. It was the other ten that hurt: Rishad Hossain's four went for 46 and Mustafizur Rahman's three for 43, and those were the overs Ratnayake fed on.

The chase was finished almost before it began. Saif Hassan, Tanzid Hasan and Litton Das were all out for nought inside the first 13 balls of the chase. Three batters, nine balls faced, no runs. When the fourth wicket fell at 18, Bangladesh's powerplay ended at 30 for 4 — curiously, almost identical to Sri Lanka's 29 for 4. The difference is that Sri Lanka found a partnership and Bangladesh did not.

There was a brief flicker. Towhid Hridoy, Bangladesh's best batter in the semi-final, hit two fours in six balls before he went, and Yasir Ali made 21 from 16. But two wickets fell on 50 in consecutive balls in the ninth over, another at 67 at the end of the tenth, and Bangladesh were 67 for 7 at drinks — ahead of Sri Lanka's score at the same stage, but with three more wickets gone and no Ratnayake to come. Nasum Ahmed, at No. 9, top-scored with 26 from 28 balls. It was all over in the 18th over.

Both sides lost four wickets in the powerplay — 29 for 4 and 30 for 4 — which tells you the new ball did plenty for the bowlers at both ends. The bowlers who gave nothing away were the ones who kept it tight and slow — Mahedi, Al Islam and Nasum for Bangladesh; Thushara (with a maiden), Wanuja Sahan and Ratnayake for Sri Lanka. Batting got noticeably easier as the ball got older, at least for the one batter who stayed in long enough to find out: 114 runs came in Sri Lanka's second ten overs. Bowled and lbw accounted for seven of the 19 wickets, and there was one run-out.

Sixty-five from 32 balls, seven fours and five sixes — 58 of his runs in boundaries — walking in at 54 for 5 in a medal match. Then three overs for 18 and two wickets. In a game where nobody else made more than 33, and no bowler took more than two wickets, Ratnayake was the cricketer who did both jobs and did them well.

The context makes it better. On Thursday he made 5 from 15 balls and was run out as Sri Lanka subsided to 45. He would have been forgiven for carrying that into this match. Instead he played as though the semi-final belonged to somebody else. That is a rare quality — the ability to leave a bad day where it fell — and it is the reason Sri Lanka have a medal to take home from Japan.

This match did not have a dedicated CricIntel preview. Our semi-finals preview did not make a call on the bronze-medal match; it pointed to Sri Lanka's Full Member pedigree and to how seriously Bangladesh take multi-sport events. On the day, it was the Sri Lankan lower-middle order, rather than anything that preview could have anticipated, that decided which of them stood on the podium.

That is the end of the men's cricket at these Games for both sides. Sri Lanka take bronze; later the same day India beat Pakistan by 19 runs in the final to keep the gold. Sri Lanka leave Nisshin with two very different matches behind them — 45 all out in the semi-final and a 63-run win in the play-off — and the second is the one worth keeping.

Bangladesh finish fourth. They will reflect on a tournament in which the bowling was often good enough and the top order was not: 21 for 3 in the semi-final against Pakistan, 4 for 3 here. With Hridoy in form and spinners as tidy as Mahedi and Nasum, they had the makings of a medal. They needed a partnership, and on Saturday morning they never found one.