In what was expected to be a tight quarter-final at SCG, turned out to be a quite a pale one. South Africa, who have a history of choking in the knock-outs of a big tournament, came all guns blazing against Sri Lanka in the first quarter-final and riding on some excellent bowling performances especially from JP Duminy, leggie Imran Tahir and Dale Steyn, they blew Sri Lanka apart for just 133 runs at SCG.
After choosing to bat, Sri Lanka made a tactical blunder by sending in Kusal Perera to open with Tillakaratne Dilshan. Perera, who struggles against swing bowling, looked uncomfortable from the start itself and as a result, lost his wicket to Kyle Abbott. Dilshan, Sri Lanka’s second highest run-scorer for Sri Lanka in this tournament, also got out cheaply on the bowling of Steyn. Lahiru Thirimanne and Kumar Sangakkara tried to steady the ship but with the latter playing very slowly, Thirimanne lost his wicket in the anxiety to up the scoring rate. Tahir and Duminy then joined the party and struck at regular intervals. Duminy took the second hat-trick of this World Cup and the first by a South African in World Cup. Duminy and Tahir shared 7 wickets between them. For Sri Lanka, Sangakkara, who has four hundreds to his name in this World Cup, played a match loosing innings of 45 runs off 96 balls.