Toss Sri Lanka chose to bat v PakistanLive scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Mahela Jayawardene won the toss, and keeping with the pattern in the few matches so far in the tour, opted to bat. The pitch at Hambantota produced two low-scoring Twenty20 games, but the surface at Pallekele is expected to be more batsman-friendly.
Sri Lanka fielded a strong line-up, bringing in the left-arm spinner Rangana Herath, who was rested for the Asia Cup in March. Their seam-heavy attack includes the allrounders Thisara Perera and Angelo Mathews. Lasith Malinga returned after missing the second Twenty20.
Pakistan decided not to play Imran Farhat, thereby promoting Azhar Ali as opener. Sohail Tanvir, who was retained after his sound performances in the Twenty20s, was picked to lend more variety to Pakistan's seam line-up, which also included the returning Mohammad Sami. The visitors went in with six specialist seamers, including two spin-allrounders.
Sri Lanka began the series needing to reverse their recent poor record against Pakistan, which included just two wins in the last ten encounters.
Sri Lanka: 1 Tillakaratne Dilshan, 2 Upul Tharanga, 3 Mahela Jayawardene (capt), 4 Dinesh Chandimal, 5 Kumar Sangakkara (wk), 6 Lahiru Thirimanne, 7 Angelo Mathews, 8 Thisara Perera, 9 Nuwan Kulasekara, 10 Rangana Herath, 11 Lasith Malinga
Pakistan 1 Mohammad Hafeez, 2 Azhar Ali, 3 Younis Khan, 4 Misbah-ul-Haq (capt), 5 Umar Akmal, 6 Shahid Afridi, 7 Sarfraz Ahmed (wk), 8 Umar Gul, 9 Saeed Ajmal, 10 Sohail Tanvir, 11 Mohammad Sami
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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