Sri Lanka were playing their 52nd match on Indian soil - maximum by any visiting side on Indian soil. They were earlier at level with Australia and West Indies with 51 matches. Sri Lanka - with 18 wins - however, still have to improve their performance tremendously to come near West Indies' record of most wins (31) on Indian soil by any visiting side.
Upul Tharanga also became the fourth batsman to score back to back hundreds in ICC Champions Trophy after Pakistan's Saeed Anwar (in 2000), India's Sourav Ganguly (in 2000) and South Africa's Herschelle Gibbs (in 2002).
Tharanga has now scored six hundreds in just 31 games - easily the quickest to score this many hundreds. The previous record of scoring six hundreds in least number of matches was held by Pakistan's Zaheer Abbas, who scored his sixth hundred playing in his 36th match.
Five of Tharanga's hundreds have come in the year 2006 in only 20 matches. In fact Tharanga has been in such a great form recently that in last nine innings (starting from NatWest Challenge against England) Tharanga has hit four hundreds. Tharanga's sequence of scores in these 9 matches: 120, 17, 41, 60, 109 (v England), 18, 72 (v Netherlands), 105 (v Bangladesh)... and 110 (v Zimbabwe) - a total of 652 runs at an average of 72.44.
Tharanga's run-aggregate after 31 matches stands at 1,161 (at an average of 40.03) - highest for any Sri Lankan batsman after exactly 31 matches. He went ahead of Roy Dias who had aggregated 1,125 runs (at 43.27). Incidentally the highest run-tally after 31 ODIs in all ODIs is on the name of Pakistan's Yasir Hameed - with 1,382 runs (at 46.07).
Kumar Sangakkara completed his 5,000 runs when his score reached 4 during his innings of 80. He was playing 162nd innings in his 176th match. Sangakkara became 46th batsman in ODI history to reach this milestone.
The 165-run partnership between Tharanga and Sangakkara is the highest partnership for the third wicket from any side in ICC Champions Trophy, obliterating the 163-run partnership between New Zealanders Nathan Astle and Scott Styris against USA at The Oval on 10-09-2004.
The catch of his counterpart Utseya was the 17th for Mahela Jayawardene off the bowling of Muttiah Muralitharan - maximum for any fielder off a spinner equalling the tally of Australian Mark Waugh (off Shane Warne).
The wicket of Ireland was 200th for Muttiah Muralitharan in day-night one-day internationals. Muralitharan became first bowler in ODI history to achieve this distinction.
Sri Lanka have now been undefeated in last ten matches - winning nine of them, while one match (v India) was abandoned without a result. This equals their best sequence of most consecutive matches without a single defeat. Sri Lanka had not suffered a defeat in 10 matches between 14-07- 1997 and 05-11-1997 and also between 29-02- 2004 and 23-07-2004.
The victory margin of 144 runs is Sri Lanka's second largest against Zimbabwe after their 191-run win at Harare on 06-11-1994 and fifth largest for them against all countries.
Tharanga won his second successive MoM award - fourth of his career.