Mahela Jayawardene, the Sri Lanka captain, last night sampled the "amazing feeling" of leading his country to a home "World Cup" final.
Jayawardene's team got the better of Pakistan by 16 runs at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, thanks in part to his innings of 42 at the top of the order and the fine spin bowling of Rangana Herath, in particular.
Pakistan (123 all out) had feasible prospects of chasing 139 for four but lost three wickets for seven runs at one stage, and then two more on the same score, as they bowed out of the ICC World Twenty20 championships at the semi-final phase for the second time in succession.
While they must, therefore, fly home, Jayawardene can look forward to Sunday's final – back at the same venue – against either West Indies or Australia.
"It's an amazing feeling. I'm really proud of the boys," he said. "We had great support out there; they came shouting for us on the field, and it was fantastic.
"We're a proud cricketing nation – and everybody will be behind us on Sunday, so I'm quite looking forward to that."
Jayawardene was wary of falling at the penultimate hurdle, against dangerous opponents.
"In a tournament like this, when you've done quite well, the semi-final is a big game," he said.
"You want to get to that final, and it becomes a huge game. You'll be disappointed if you don't get through.There's just one more hurdle for us to negotiate now."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article