Jaffna topped the LPL table without beating Galle, and now they meet in Qualifier 1

Jaffna Kings finished top of the Lanka Premier League table. They also lost both games they played against Galle Gallants, by 36 runs and then by 60. On Wednesday at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo the two of them meet again in Qualifier 1, with a place in Saturday’s final going to the winner, and Jaffna have some evidence to overturn.

It is a double-header. Qualifier 1 starts at 12.30pm IST, and the Eliminator between Colombo Kaps and Kandy Royals follows at 5pm. Sri Lanka keeps the same clock as India, so those are the local times too.

Qualifier 1: the team that finished second is the one in form

Jaffna topped the group on 11 points from eight matches, with five wins, two defeats and a washout against Dambulla Sixers at Pallekele on 2 August that handed them the point which put them first. Galle finished on 10 points from five wins and three defeats.

Look past the standings and Galle have been the better side. Their net run rate of 0.604 is comfortably the highest in the tournament, and they have scored 1,558 runs, more than anyone else. They made 220 against Dambulla, 213 against Jaffna in the opening match of the season, and 208 against Kandy. When Galle have batted first, teams have generally been chasing something uncomfortable.

Their two wins over Jaffna were not close. The tournament opener at the SSC on 17 July finished 36 runs in Galle’s favour, and at Dambulla on 23 July they defended 193 and bowled Jaffna out for 133 with more than two overs unused. Jaffna’s counter-argument is that Galle are the only side who beat them all season. Every other match they completed, they won, including a 93-run demolition of Kandy and a five-run squeeze on Colombo.

Jaffna have won this competition four times, more than any other franchise, and the loser of this one does not go home. They drop into Qualifier 2 on Friday and get a second route to the final. That tends to change how sides play a Qualifier 1, usually for the worse.

Eliminator: Colombo’s split personality against Kandy’s odd record

Colombo Kaps finished third on 8 points, and their season divides neatly in two. Against Dambulla and Kandy they won all four matches. Against Jaffna and Galle they lost all four. Both defeats to Jaffna were narrow, five runs in one and 19 in the other, and they lost by 13 to Galle on 1 August, so they have not been outclassed so much as repeatedly beaten by the same two teams.

Kandy Royals scraped into fourth on 6 points with a net run rate of minus 0.567, which is the worst of the four qualifiers and only fractionally worse than Dambulla’s, who missed out by a single point. Kandy won three matches all season. Two of them were against Galle, and the third was a 43-run win over bottom-placed Dambulla.

That is the strange thing about this Eliminator. The team that finished fourth beat the tournament’s best batting side twice, once by 11 runs and once by chasing 209 with seven balls left. Against Jaffna and Colombo, the two sides they did not beat, Kandy lost all four and one of those was by 93 runs. Now they need to beat Colombo at the fifth attempt, in an elimination match.

What follows

The loser of the Eliminator is out. Its winner plays the loser of Qualifier 1 on Friday at 5pm IST, also at the Premadasa, and the survivor of that goes into Saturday’s final at the same ground and the same time.

The neat version is that Galle have scored the most runs, Jaffna have the four titles, Colombo beat everyone below them and Kandy have nothing left to lose. The less neat version is that this is a five-team league in which the fourth-placed side won both its matches against the best batting team in it, and the side that finished top lost both of its. Wednesday is worth watching for that reason alone.

Follow the rest of our LPL coverage