Like it was said earlier, the 2003 world cup was the most thrilling tournament ever in the history of cricket from many points of views. By the time of 2003 World Cup, Kenya was the far better side from his first-world cup appearance in 1996 and it was the same time in the 96 world cup when they defeated two times world champions West Indies in the group game. But that's another story we will go through some other day?
In the 2003 world cup 14 teams were featured in the tournament which was the first-time ever in world Cup history. The top three teams of each group qualified for the super six stages with Australia, Sri Lanka, India, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Some of the big names like South Africa (hosts), Pakistan, England and West Indies were knocked out of the league phase round.
Before this game, Kenya had won 2 games out of their 3 while Sri Lanka had won all their 3 games which featured Hattrick of Chaminda Vass against Bangladesh and lowest ever total by Canada of 36 runs of that time. No one would have thought about the outcome of the match between Kenya and Sri Lanka at Nairobi, Kenya on 24th February 2003. Kenya one bonus victory against New Zealand was due to a walkover while against Canada they emerged out as victorious. In the game against South Africa, Kenya was at the receiving end where the former defeated them by 10-wickets.
Starting their world cup campaign on the losing end, Kenya went on to make a very strong statement with the most sensational victory against Champions of 1996 world cup Sri Lanka. And it was this victory which somewhere had depicted the minnows called Kenya deserved every chance to play as many games in the world Cup tournament ahead.
Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya won the toss and invited the hosts Kenya to bat first to complete the batting task of the first innings. Like the previous starts in the tournament, Chaminda Vass had begun on the same note when he struck again on the second ball of the match to remove Ravi Shah who was in the front of the wickets to give the early dent into the hosts line-up.
For the next wicket, they added 45 runs before Chaminda Vass picked up another wicket of Brijal Patel (12) who was caught by wicket-keeper batsman Kumar Sangarkara at the scorecard of 46/2. Surviving the early hiccups, Kenya moved onto 112 runs for the loss of 3 wickets and looked to accelerate the momentum of the start. But dangerous looking Kennedy Otieno 60 runs off 88 balls was caught by Muthaih Muralitharan on Aravinda de silva delivery. From that point Kenya had struggled hard to somehow reach the total 210 runs for the loss of 9 wickets in their allotted 50 overs. In the Kenya total runs, 28 extras was the second highest runs after Kennedy Otieno. Chaminda Vass (4) and Muthaih Muralitharan (3) shared seven wickets each.
It was the formality for the team like Sri Lanka to complete his fourth victory in the tournament with their strong line-up. But things went worse for the champions of 96 world cup when they lost their 6 wicket at the scorecard of 112 runs by the end of 30th over. Kenya made it clear with their intentions that they were not going to let this shift away from that onwards. Before Sri Lanka completed his 50 overs, they were all out at the score of 157 in the 45 overs. Collins Obuya was awarded for his surreal performance of 5-wickets in 10 overs for just 24 runs. After this game, Kenya has defeated Bangladesh in his last name to enter the super six stage and at last qualified for the semi-finals for the first-time ever as a non-test playing nation.
