On Sunday at Antigua’s Coolidge Cricket Ground, a pair of West Indies fast bowlers produced one of the most dramatic late-game turnarounds in recent warm-up cricket, delivering an incredible 15-run comeback victory for the West Indies Select XI against Sri Lanka. Pace partners Nial Smith and Alzarri Joseph shared all but one of the opposition wickets between them, tearing through Sri Lanka’s batting order to turn a seemingly inevitable defeat into a historic upset.
Sri Lanka entered the fourth and final day of the warm-up fixture perfectly positioned to chase down their 124-run target, sitting comfortably at 30 for one overnight. For the opening phase of play, the result looked all but confirmed: batters Nishan Madushka and Dinesh Chandimal steadily pushed the score to 46 for one, putting the visitors well on course to hit the required mark with more than enough wickets in hand.
The match’s momentum shifted irreversibly in a single half hour, starting with Smith’s first breakthrough. The paceman trapped Chandimal leg before wicket for 19, then sent Madushka’s stumps cartwheeling for 30 just a few overs later. That collapse left Sri Lanka reeling at 60 for three, and Smith kept the pressure on by catching Dhananjaya de Silva behind the wicket for just one run to extend the visitors’ losing streak of wickets.
Joseph joined the demolition job shortly after, bowling Pasindu Sooriyabandara for a duck, while off-spinner Ojay Shields claimed the only wicket that did not go to the pace duo, removing Sonal Dinusha for four to drop Sri Lanka to 60 for six at the midpoint of their chase. Even with eight wickets down, Sri Lanka still held a narrow advantage, as Prabath Jayasuriya and Milan Rathnayake pushed the total to 89 for six, bringing the visitors within 35 runs of victory with just four wickets remaining.
Yet Smith and Joseph refused to let the chance of victory slip. Smith pouched a sharp return catch to remove Jayasuriya for 10, before Joseph bowled Rathnayake for six to leave the visitors reeling at 93 for eight. The pair closed out the contest in quick fashion, dismissing Vishwa Fernando and Lahiru Kumara in consecutive overs to skittle Sri Lanka out for just 108 from 29.5 overs, 15 runs short of their target. Smith finished the dominant bowling display with career-best figures of 5 wickets for just 30 runs, while Joseph backed him up with 4 wickets for 41 runs, wrapping up one of the most surprising comeback wins of the international cricket warm-up season.