Mahela Jayawardene’s pristine knock and his big partnership with skipper Sangakkara set up an easy Sri Lankan victory over the host in the super eight match of the T20 World Cup here on Friday.

Like a grandmaster in chess, Jayawardene manipulated the bowling and with sublime skills coerced the balls to all parts of the field to score unbeaten 98 runs. He shared a 166-run second wicket stand with Sangakkara to take the game away from the host.

However, it could be said that the host’s woes were self inflicted. Any team which drops six chances in a match doesn’t deserve to win and that was exactly what the West Indies did on a night of horror at Kensington Oval.

Kieren Pollard set the trend which was to haunt the West Indies through out the match. He dropped a sitter at backward point but the lapse didn’t prove to be costly as Jayasuriya departed cheaply. The normally reliable Gayle dropped Sangakkara before the batsman had scored. Stand-in keeper Fletcher had an imminently forgettable night. First he missed a stumping chance off Benn when the tall bowler induced a rare mistake from Jayawardene and three balls later didn’t react when Jayawardene mistimed a sweep and the ball fell between the keeper and Hinds.

Both Jayawerdene and Sangakkara didn’t look at the gift horses’ mouth and settled down to play strokes of high quality. Sangakkara, though not as elegant as Jayawardene, was efficient enough to take the toll on the demoralized West Indian bowlers. Jayawardene was innovative and played strokes of sheer audacity as Sri Lanka raced away to a match winning total. He was left stranded on 98 not out and narrowly missed his second century of the tournament.

Chanderpaul swept Mathews for a six to get the chase off to a good start and West Indies had rattled off 22 runs in the first two overs before disaster struck. Chanderpaul top-edged another swipe to be caught by Kapugedera and two balls later Gayle was undone by a ball which with extra bounce which the batsman parried to extra over.

West Indies could never recover from the early blows. Though Bravo and Sarwan added 54 runs for the third wicket, the hosts were behind the run-rate. The duo departed in quick succession as the Sri Lankan spinners kept the run-rate in check. Too much was left to Kieron Pollard and the big man was surprisingly sent in after Fletcher who struggled with the bat as well. When Pollard skied Mendis the writing was on the wall for West Indies which capitulated without much fight.