Sri Lanka booked their place in the final of the one-day tri-series in emphatic fashion on Tuesday, sweeping Pakistan aside by eight wickets at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium after bowling the hosts out for a meagre 110. The visitors reached the small target in the nineteenth over with more than thirty overs still unused. For a home side that had started the series with back-to-back wins, it was a sobering night, and for Sri Lanka it was the perfect response to their opening defeat in Rawalpindi.
The chase itself was never really a contest. Kamindu Mendis anchored it with an unbeaten 62 from 60 balls, including eight fours and two sixes, taking him to his fifth half-century in one-day internationals. He found an early ally in Avishka Fernando, and the pair raced to a fifty partnership inside the seventh over. Pakistan captain Shaheen Shah Afridi gave the home crowd brief hope when he removed Fernando for 16, and Arafat Minhas then struck when a deflection off Kusal Mendis’s bat cannoned onto the stumps to dismiss the Sri Lankan captain for eight. Those were the only two wickets Sri Lanka would lose.
Kamindu rode his luck and made Pakistan pay for it. When wicketkeeper Muhammad Ghazi Ghori thought he had completed a catch, he stepped on the boundary rope in the process, turning a dismissal into a six. From there Kamindu controlled the tempo, while Pavan Rathnayake played a calm supporting hand with 23 not out to see Sri Lanka home.
The damage, though, had been done much earlier, in a Pakistan innings that fell apart almost from the first over. Dilshan Madushanka led the destruction with a superb spell, finishing with five wickets for 34 runs in eight overs and three balls, a performance that ripped through the top order and the tail alike. Fakhar Zaman was gone for five in the fourth over, and Maaz Sadaqat managed only eight as Pakistan slipped to 23 for two inside seven overs. Saad Baig added five more before also falling to Madushanka, leaving the innings in deep trouble before it had found any rhythm at all.
Babar Azam and Salman Ali Agha tried to steady the ship, but their partnership lasted only fifteen runs before Sahan Arachchige removed Agha for nine. Babar, who top-scored with 29 from 33 balls, then fell to Eshan Malinga, and at 61 for five in the fourteenth over Pakistan were already staring at a total well short of anything competitive. Shadab Khan, fresh from a maiden one-day century against England in the previous match, was dismissed for just two. Arafat Minhas contributed ten before becoming Madushanka’s third victim, and Hasan Nawaz made seventeen before falling to Dunith Wellalage.
Only Shaheen Afridi, batting down the order, gave the total any respectability, striking two sixes in a brisk fifteen that carried Pakistan past one hundred. Even he could not hold out, as Madushanka returned to dismiss the captain and close the innings on 110. Arachchige finished with two wickets, while Asitha Fernando, Malinga and Wellalage claimed one each, completing a disciplined bowling display in which every bowler played his part and none allowed Pakistan’s batters to settle.
The result flips the early story of this series on its head. Pakistan had begun the tournament in Rawalpindi with a win over Sri Lanka and then beaten England as well, and the win over England in Lahore on Sunday, built around Shadab’s century, had suggested a side growing in confidence. Tuesday’s collapse raises sharper questions than a single bad day usually would, because the problems were not confined to one batter. The top order went cheaply, the middle order could not rebuild, and the lower order was left with too much to do.
For Sri Lanka, the victory carries significance beyond the result itself. They are in Pakistan as part of a longer tour that also includes two Test matches counting towards the World Test Championship, and this series is being used by all three teams as preparation for the 2027 World Cup, hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. A win of this authority in Lahore will give Kusal Mendis’s side real belief, and Kamindu’s measured unbeaten fifty stands out as a growing asset.
What happens next keeps the tournament alive. The league stage still has one fixture to play, between Sri Lanka and England in Lahore on Thursday, before the top two sides meet in the final at the same ground on Saturday, October 31. Pakistan cannot afford to carry Tuesday’s batting frailties into the final week, and the team management must decide whether the answer lies in a change of personnel or simply in a calmer approach from batters who have already shown they can score heavily in this series. The bowling, led by Shaheen, remains a strength, but no attack can defend totals around one hundred with any regularity. Sri Lanka, by contrast, know their template works: early wickets, control through the middle overs, and a batting line-up capable of finishing a job without fuss. If they repeat that formula on Saturday, they will be hard to stop.
