The final between Pakistan and Sri Lanka at Lords turned out to be a great day for Pakistani cricket, but was not the exciting final many wanted.

Pakistan won the toss and elected to bowl first. Their new ball bowlers executed their plans superbly and Sri Lank were in deep trouble at 2-2 in the second over and simply never recovered from their early loss. Jayasuriya started to get going, but fell to an inside edge just when a fightback looked possible. Then Jayawardene also went early and at 32-4, the Pakistanis had effectively limited Sri Lanka’s ability to take any risks.

Sangakkarra rebuilt the innings, firstly with Chamara Silva, and then with Angelo Matthews, but the Pakistanis would have been very happy with their bowling and fielding.

A score of 138-6, gave Sri Lanka a chance if they made some early inroads. However Karman Akmal got the Pakistani innings off to a good start and Sri Lanka had too much to do. Shahid Afridi then came in and finished the job off superbly. He is a great talent, and it was good to see him see the inning through to its conclusion comfortably at 139-2.

The Pakistanis thoroughly deserve their victory, and have shown how difficult they are to stop when they get some valuable momentum. If they could simply get this excited whenever they play, they be unstoppable. All in all it was a good tournament, with 20/20 cricket now here to stay. Hopefully it gives great confidence to some of the poorer performing teams of recent times such as Pakistan, the West Indies, England and New Zealand as all of them had good tournaments. It was refreshing to see Australia knocked out early and the challenge is for these other teams to take their 20/20 confidence into the longer formats of the game.