• This was the first ever One-Day International match at Pietermaritzburg. South Africa have now used 12 cities to host One-Day Internationals.
• Aravinda de Silva was playing his 300th match. He became the fifth player after Wasim Akram (351 matches), Mohammad Azharuddin (334), Steve Waugh (325) and Sachin Tendulkar (304) to appear in 300 or more matches in LOIs.
• Chaminda Vaas became the only third bowler in World Cup history to take a hat-trick after India’s Chetan Sharma (v New Zealand at Nagpur in 1987) and Pakistani Saqlain Mushtaq (v Zimbabwe at The Oval on 1999).
• Vaas became the first bowler in international cricket (including Tests) to do so in the very first over of the match, infact the first three balls of the match. Just for the record, Vaas’ former teammate Nuwan Zoysa has the distinction of claiming the quickest Test hat-trick which came off the second over of the match against Zimbabwe at Harare in November 1999.
• Bangladesh opener Hannan Sarkar became only the second batsman after New Zealander John Wright to be dismissed off the first ball in a World Cup. It must be, however, noted that Wright was dismissed off the first legitimate ball (preceded by two wides) off Craig McDermott against Australia at Auckland in 1992.
• Vaas has now dismissed a batsman off the very first ball of a ODI match on five separate occasions - the most by any bowler in ODIs. Pakistani Wasim Akram has achieved this feat four times.
• Mashrafe Mortaza’s 28 is the highest score made by a Bangladeshi batsman while batting at number ten. He went past the previous best of 21 runs by Hasibul Hossain against India at Mumbai on 25-5-1998.
• Vaas’ figures of 6 for 25 in 9.1 overs are the best for Sri Lanka in the World Cup bettering the previous best of 5 for 32 (in 12 overs) by Ashanta de Mel against New Zealand at Derby in 1983.
• Vaas became second bowler to take six wickets in a match against Bangladesh. The only other being Zimbabwean Bryan Strang who had the figures of 6 for 20 at Nairobi in 1997.
• Vaas became the third bowler after Pakistani Waqar Younis (on five occasions) and Zimbabwean Henry Olonga to capture six or more wickets in an ODI on more than one occasion. He had taken the World record haul of 8 for 19 against Zimbabwe at Colombo in 2001.
• Vaas has now taken 19 wickets in 13 World Cup matches for Sri Lanka. This takes him ahead of Ashanta deMel and Muttiah Muralitharan as the leading wicket taker for Sri Lanka in World Cup. Both deMel and Muralitharan have 18 wickets to their credit.
• Marvan Atapattu became the fourth Sri Lankan and the 24th batsman in ODIs to aggregate 6000 runs when his score reached 30 .He was playing his 182nd match and 180th innings.
• This was Bangladesh’s 27th loss in the last 28 matches ever since beating Pakistan in 1999 World Cup. The team is still to win a match during this period. Bangladesh have now won only three matches out of 63 they have played in.
• Sri Lanka recorded their second win by 10 wickets in ODIs. They had beaten England at Colombo in 2001 by a similar margin.

(Article: Copyright © 2003 Rajneesh Gupta)