Nissanka ton pushes Australia to the verge of elimination

A sparkling hundred from Pathum Nissanka – the first of T20 World Cup 2026 – catapulted Sri Lanka to a jumbo win over Australia in Pallekele. The result has ushered the co-hosts into the Super 8s with their third straight win, while leaving Australia’s fate out of their hands having conceded twice in as many games now.

“I think it was probably just execution tonight, that full strength batting lineup has got some of the best players of spin in Australia. So it was probably more about just execution tonight,” said losing skipper Mitchell Marsh at the press conference after the match. “I thought Sri Lanka pulled it back beautifully. We were a few short after the start. We probably knew that going into the second innings, but we had great belief that we’d get the job done, but we were outplayed.”

“I guess we’ll never know what would have happened if we made 220. We had a good platform, but we just weren’t able to execute towards the back end. It’s disappointing. Certainly not here to blame anyone, but yeah, we’re a disappointed bunch… We knew we were going to face spin towards the back end, it slowed up a little bit, but again, just execution.”

“I thought tonight Nissanka just played brilliantly and take our situation and our team out of it. You take your hat off to someone when they score 100 off 50 balls in a World Cup match in a tight run chase at this stage of our group. So yeah, I take my hat off to him. And it was an incredible innings. And we didn’t have many answers for him tonight,” said Marsh.

When asked about the difference between the two innings, Marsh said: “I don’t think there was much dew. I’m not sure if the wicket got better, I didn’t feel that way. But I know that in these conditions, partnerships are incredibly important. If you look at the two innings outside of our opening partnership, we just weren’t able to form a good one to get going again. So yeah, that’s probably the difference in the game.”

Brief Scores: Australia 181 all out in 20 overs (Travis Head 56, Mitchell Marsh 54, Dushan Hemantha 3-37, Dushmantha Chameera 2-36) lost to Sri Lanka 184/2 in 18 overs (Pathum Nissanka 100*, Kusal Mendis 51, Marcus Stoinis 2-46) by 8 wickets