Dinesh Karthik scored a half-century and Ashish Nehra claimed a four-wicket haul as India beat Sri Lanka by 81 runs Thursday to win the Asia Cup for the first time in 15 years. Sri Lanka was aiming to retain the title for the second successive tournament but it came up well short chasing a victory target of 269. India, which won four titles in the 1980s and ‘90s, elected to bat first after winning the toss and made a challenging 268-6 in 50 overs. Opener Karthik made 66 off 86 balls, with Rohit Sharma (41) and captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (38) also weighing in with decent scores. Lasith Malinga and Thilina Kandamby took two wickets each for Sri Lanka, who crumbled in its chase and was dismissed for 187 with two balls remaining in the 45th over. Karthik, who flew in as a replacement for the injured Virender Sehwag, was named Man of the Match. Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi, who made 265 runs in three matches, including two centuries, won the Player of the Tournament award. Dhoni said that despite the win, he wasn't satisfied with his team's batting – including his. “Most of us got the kind of starts that we needed and we should have converted those starts into big innings,” he told reporters. “It's important to learn (from your mistakes) even if you are winning games.” His opposing captain, Kumar Sangakkara, said his players failed to deal with the swinging ball at Rangiri Dambulla Stadium. “We were expecting the ball to move anyway in Dambulla. Unfortunately we could not deal with the swing that was there,” Sangakkara said. “Technically I think we could have dealt with it a lot better; mentally we could have dealt with it a lot better.” Sri Lanka's batsmen started poorly, losing its first wicket with just five runs on the board and continued to struggle against an invigorated Indian seam attack that took advantage of the night-time conditions at Dambulla. Tillakaratne Dilshan (0), on his second ball, miscued a pull shot off Praveen Kumar and was caught by Harbhajan Singh. Upul Tharanga (16) then left a delivery from Zaheer Khan that cut back onto the stumps with the total on 31. But the most damaging blow came in the 14th over bowled by Nehra, who had Mahela Jayawardene (11) and Angelo Mathews (0) caught behind by Dhoni in the space of two balls. Sri Lanka slumped to 51-5 – losing three wickets for just one run – when Nehra had Sri Lanka captain Sangakkara caught by Khan for 17. They could not recover from there despite some smaller partnerships. Thilina Kandamby and Chamara Kapugedera put up a brief resistance, a 53-run partnership for the sixth wicket before Kandamby was run out for 31 off 45 balls. Kapugedera played a shot but failed to respond to Kandamby's call for a run as both players were left stranded at one end. India had no problem seeing off Sri Lanka's tail.
