Galle Marvels batter Alex Hales heaps praise on spinner Maheesh Theekshana after their emphatic super-over win against Dambulla Sixers in the Lanka Premier League (LPL) on Sunday (July 14).

Theekshana was superb in the match as he defended 8 runs in the last over for Galle and also conceded just 6 runs in the super-over to give Galle a fabulous win as well as the qualification for the knockouts.

Galle started very well after being sent to bat first as Hales batted aggressively in the powerplay. However, when the spinners came for Dambulla, they turned around the match and restricted Galle for just 148 runs for 9 wickets in 20 overs. Hales was the best batter for Galle with 38 runs from 26 balls with 5 fours and a six.

However, Dambulla were in good position in the chase but Theekshana changed the game for Galle. Praising Theekshana, Hales said, “Absolutely brilliant. And his performance, you know, pretty much throughout the game is really, really good. He bowled crucial overs. It was a brilliant super-over there, started with a couple of wides but I think that was the plan to take it away from Nabi and I thought he did really well and we also fielded well, took a catch and got a run out and it gave us a chance to win in the last over.”

About the game, Hales added, “I thought in the powerplay it was actually quite nice with the seamers. The ball came on quite nicely, it was nice to bat but I thought their spinners bowled really well. They controlled their length beautifully. They didn't give us anything short to work with so I think a lot of credit has to go with them. But yeah, the pitch is definitely a little bit slower than what we got used to in Dambulla so we're gonna have to adapt as a batting unit and try and figure out it's probably not going to be 200, it's going to be looking at how are we going to build to get to those kind of scores instead.”