Pakistan outclassed Sri Lanka with their allround performance and won the World Twenty20 championship by eight wickets at the Lord's here Sunday.
Pakistan, which finished runners-up to India in 2007, achieved the target of 139 in 18.4 overs after losing only two wickets as Man of the Match Shaid Afridi, promoted up the order, scored an unbeaten 54 off 40 balls.
Comeback man Abdul Razzaq scalped three wickets as a rejuvenated Pakistan restricted Sri Lanka to 138 for six in 20 overs.
Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara, who opted to bat first, scored an unbeaten 64 off 52 balls while in-form Tillakaratne Dilshan, who was adjudged at the Man of the Series, failed to open his account.
Robbed off international cricketing action due to strife back home, it was a deserving victory for Pakistan that started the the tournamnet on a disastrous note by losing both their warm-up matches and then suffering a crushing victory against hosts England in the group stage.
Kamran Akmal (37) and teenager Shahzaid Hasan (19) gave Pakistan a rollicking start while Afridi's biltzkreig, which had two fours and two sixes, and Shoaib Malik's 24 not out took them home.
Sri Lanka, which had remained the only unbeaten team in the tournament till the final, suffered quick blows after Sangakkara elected to bat on a slow wicket.
They were reduced to two for two in the second over. Razzaq joined the party too and his double strikes reduced Sri Lanka to 34 for four before the skipper led the rescue act with a valiant unbeaten 64 from 52 balls.
Sangakkara and Angelo Mathews (35 not out) added 68 valuable runs for the seventh wicket as Sri Lanka scored 59 runs in the last five overs.
Teenage fast bowler Mohammad Aamir got Pakistan the first breakthrough by dismissing tournament's leading run scorer Dilshan in the first over.
In the next over, Jehan Mubarak skied a leading edge off Razzaq.
Sanath Jayasuriya (17) started the attack by hitting Razzaq for a six, but the bowler took the revenge by castling his stumps two balls later. Razzaq picked up his third wicket when Misbah-ul Haq dived to his right at slip to remove Mahela Jayawardene (1).
LTTE chief Prabhakaran, the man who led the battle for a separate Tamil state for over three decades, has been reportedly shot by the Lankan army as he tried to flee. This news comes just hours after the Lankan government said they had found the body of LTTE supremo's 24-year-old son Charles Anthony.
Sri Lanka's beleaguered Tamil Tiger guerrillas Monday urged Indian spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to facilitate a ceasefire in the island nation.
The appeal was made in a telephonic conversation between Ravi Shankar and B. Nadesan, chief of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Nadesan said thousands of people 'are suffering due to an acute shortage of food and medical facilities' in the narrow strip of land still held by the LTTE.
He said that the LTTE was 'ready for peace and requested Ravi Shankar to do the needful to facilitate a ceasefire'.
The LTTE plea came as the Sri Lankan military said it had confided the LTTE to an area less than five square kilometers on the coast of Mullaitivu district.
A murdered Sri Lankan journalist was Sunday posthumously awarded the 2009 UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize during a ceremony held in the Qatari capital.
The ceremony honouring Lasantha Wickrematunge was attended by Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser Al-Missned, wife of the Qatari emir, and UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura at the conclusion of a two-day conference held to celebrate the World Press Freedom Day.
'On (Wickrematunge's) behalf, and on behalf of fellow journalists who are willing to risk their life and liberty, from the bottom of my heart I thank you,' said the journalist's widow Sonali in a statement read by her niece, Natalie.
Wickrematunge was chosen because of an editorial he wrote that appeared Jan 8, 2009, three days after he was murdered, in the Sunday Leader, the newspaper he founded in 1994.
'People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot,' wrote Wickrematunge in the editorial.
The jury members described him as a man who 'was clearly conscious of the dangers he faced but nevertheless chose to speak out, even beyond his grave'.
He was shot dead by a group of black-clad men on motorcycles as he was driving along a motorway. No arrests have been made in his killing.