Kusal Mendis Finishes the Series With 87 Not Out as Sri Lanka Win by 8 Wickets; Pakistan Take It 2-1

A dead rubber is only dead for the side that decides to treat it that way. Sri Lanka, 2-0 down and with nothing left in the series to play for, chose to play as if there were, and the result was the most complete performance by either team in the three matches. Kusal Mendis walked in at 15 for 1 in the second over and walked off at the end with 87 not out from 48 balls, nine fours and four sixes, and the match in his pocket.

Sri Lanka chose to field, as they had two days earlier, and this time the decision held up. Dasun Shanaka took 3 for 21, Pakistan were 102 for 6 after 14 overs, and it took a 66-run stand between Sahibzada Farhan and Arafat Minhas to get them to a defendable number. It was not quite enough. Pakistan 168/8 (20 overs). Sri Lanka 172/2 (17.1 overs). Sri Lanka won by 8 wickets with 17 balls remaining. Pakistan take the series 2-1, Farhan was named Player of the Series, and Kusal Mendis was Player of the Match.

The tone of Sri Lanka's bowling was set in the fourth over. Eshan Malinga had Fakhar Zaman caught by Lahiru Udara for 12, and three balls later Maaz Sadaqat, whose 96 had won the previous match, was caught by Chamindu Wickramasinghe for a three-ball duck. Pakistan were 34 for 2 after 34 for none, and the powerplay ended at 57 for 2.

Shanaka then did the middle-overs work. Vijayakanth Viyaskanth had Hasan Nawaz caught by Kamindu Mendis at 67, and Shanaka took the next three: Khawaja Nafay caught by Sahan Arachchige for 3, Mohammad Imran caught by Wickramasinghe for 6, and Abdul Samad caught by Udara for 15. Pakistan were 102 for 6 in the 14th over. Shanaka's four overs cost 21, Viyaskanth's 23, and between them the two slower bowlers gave away 44 from eight overs. Nuwan Thushara returned at the death to take both Farhan and Razaullah off the last two balls of the innings. Binura Fernando's 4-0-45-0 was the one spell that got away.

The chase lost Udara, lbw to Imran, with 15 on the board. From there it was straightforward. Sineth Jayawardena hit five fours and two sixes in 38 from 26, surviving a Pakistan review in the third over, and added 59 with Kusal Mendis before Arafat Minhas had him caught by Razaullah at 74. Sri Lanka were 88 for 2 at drinks, needing 81 from 61 balls, and Kusal and Kamindu Mendis added an unbroken 98 from 55 to finish it. Kusal's fifty came from 33 balls. Four Pakistan bowlers went wicketless, and Salman Mirza's three overs cost 40.

Pakistan used the dead rubber to look at new faces. Naseem Shah, Shadab Khan and Saim Ayub, who had all bowled in the second match, did not feature in this XI; Abdul Samad, Arafat Minhas, Razaullah and Sufyan Moqim came in. The batting did not take to it. At drinks Pakistan were 72 for 4 after 9.3 overs, with Farhan on 37 and the rest of the top order gone for 31 between them. When Samad fell at 102 in the 14th, a total of 130 looked about par for the way the innings was going.

Farhan would not allow it. He reached fifty from 34 balls and then, with Minhas for company, put on 66 from 37 balls for the seventh wicket, the fifty of the stand coming in 27. Minhas, playing his part at number eight, hit two fours and two sixes in 34 not out from 20 balls. Farhan finished with 76 from 47, seven fours and three sixes, and was caught by Shanaka off Thushara on the penultimate ball. It was his third substantial score in three matches, after 89 and 73, and the Player of the Series award was the obvious one.

The bowling had no answer to Kusal Mendis. Imran, who had 3 for 11 in the second match, took the only early wicket and conceded 31 from his four. Minhas was the pick after that, 3-0-26-1, and Moqim went for 35 from four. Mirza (3-0-40-0) and Razaullah (3.1-0-37-0) were expensive, and nothing in the attack carried the threat that Naseem's absence took away. Sri Lanka scored at ten an over; Pakistan had managed 8.4.

A 168 that was chased with 17 balls to spare tells you that batting was easier in the second innings, and the scorecard supports that reading. Pakistan lost wickets in clumps against the slower bowlers, with Shanaka and Viyaskanth taking four for 44 in eight overs, whereas Sri Lanka scored 59 for 1 in the powerplay and 98 without loss in the last 55 balls they faced. Thushara and Malinga, the two quicks, each conceded 38, so pace was not the easy option either. It was simply that Sri Lanka, batting second, had set batters and Pakistan did not.

Kusal Mendis had been one half of Imran's double strike in the second match, so this was the innings that put his series right. He came in at 15 for 1 in the second over, took 33 balls over his fifty, and then scored 37 from his last 15. Nine fours and four sixes in 48 balls, a strike rate of 181, and no chance that the scorecard records. He was there at the end, 87 not out, which is the way a chase ought to be finished.

There is a quality some batters have of making a target look smaller than it is. Pakistan had scored 168 by scrambling; Sri Lanka chased it by strolling, and Kusal Mendis set the pace. His stand of 98 with Kamindu Mendis, who played the supporting role well in 40 not out from 27, meant that Pakistan never had a second wicket to work with.

Our preview did not pick a winner, which is just as well, because the one call it did make about the match went the right way: it said that "the team batting second could hold the edge" under lights at Rawalpindi, and Sri Lanka chose to field and chased 168 with 17 balls to spare. We were right about the dynamic and did not commit to the side.

Our players to watch had a mixed evening. Sahibzada Farhan, our Pakistan pick, made 76 from 47 and was named Player of the Series; we said two match-winning innings would be a declaration, and he has now made 89, 73 and 76 in three matches. Matheesha Pathirana, our Sri Lanka pick, was not in the XI, and nor were Wanindu Hasaranga, Pathum Nissanka or Dushmantha Chameera, the names we built Sri Lanka's case around for a third match running. The match was won instead by Dasun Shanaka, 3 for 21, and Kusal Mendis, whom our preview treated as the captain rather than as the match-winner. We also called Naseem Shah Pakistan's trump card at his home ground; he did not play, and the attack that replaced him went at ten an over.

Pakistan win the T20I series 2-1, after a four-wicket win in the opener and an 82-run win in the second match. Sri Lanka leave Rawalpindi with a consolation win and, in Kusal Mendis and Dasun Shanaka, two senior players who finished the leg in form. Farhan's 238 runs across the three games is the single most useful thing Pakistan take from the series, and the fact that the bowling missed Naseem Shah is the second. The two teams meet again in the Test series that follows in November.