Sri Lanka Defeat Against New Zealand Increase Tension In Pakistan: In the ICC T20 World Cup 2026, New Zealand has defeated Sri Lanka by 61 runs in the Super-8 match. With this spectacular victory, New Zealand has taken a big step towards the semi-finals. On Wednesday i.e. 25th February, R. of Colombo. In this match played at Premadasa Stadium, the Kiwi team made a spectacular comeback and ended Sri Lanka’s journey from the tournament. With this, Sri Lanka has also become the first team to be eliminated from Group 2.

Rachin Ravindra did all-round performance

The real hero of New Zealand’s victory against Sri Lanka was Rachin Ravindra, who was adjudged Player of the Match. Batting first, he played a useful inning of 32 runs in 22 balls, then scattered the Sri Lankan middle order with his bowling. Ravindra took 4 wickets for just 27 runs. Apart from them, New Zealand had made a challenging score of 168/7 on the basis of strong batting of captain Mitchell Santner (47) and Cole McConkie (31*).

Sri Lanka’s departure from the tournament with a shameful defeat

Sri Lanka had a very bad start to chase the target of 169 runs given by New Zealand. The Sri Lankan team had lost 2 important wickets in the power play itself, after which the entire team could score only 107 runs at the loss of 8 wickets in the stipulated 20 overs. Sri Lankan batsmen failed to stay on the spin track and with the second consecutive defeat, the Sri Lankan team is officially out of the race for the semi-finals.

Why did Pakistan’s tension increase?

This big win for New Zealand has made the equations of Group-2 interesting. The Kiwi team is now at second position in the group table with 3 points and an excellent Net Run Rate (NRR) of +3.050. Now the path has become very difficult for Pakistan (1 point). If England defeats New Zealand by a huge margin in their last match and then Pakistan defeats Sri Lanka by a huge margin, then only then will the Pakistani team have any hope of reaching the semi-finals. Due to this complicated equation, the tension of the Pakistani team has increased.