10.35pm The snooze fest is over. Fine, fine win from Pakistan. Babar laid the ground work, Malik lent the finishing touches. Then with the ball, Raees did the early damage before Hasan Ali came into his own. Sri Lanka were only briefly in it, but the procession which they witnessed time and again during the series against India continued here in the Middle East. This is Sri Lanka's eighth consecutive ODI defeat. Plenty of work to do. On that note, this is Shashank Kishore signing off on behalf of Akshay Gopalakrishnan. Do join us for the second ODI on 16th October in Abu Dhabi. Until then, it's goodbye from the cricinfo desk. Cheers!

If they were to look for some consolation, they'd consider Thirimanne's half-century as one of the entries. Akila Dananjaya, who could've so easily looked to smash the ball, dug in and fought it out to bring up a maiden fifty of his own. But there was a sense of inevitability to this chase more than halfway in. Sri Lanka never looked to be in the game.

On a lighter note, I really wish someone's capturing all these moods of Mickey Arthur. I reckon just from this tour, there are plenty of pictures of varying emotions. Would be a fun compilation if someone manages to pull it off

Time for the presentation now

Sarfraz Ahmed: When you lose one series, the first match of the next series becomes very important. Credit to the boys. We've got a lot of bowling options. This bodes well for us. The way we've done today, we'll look to carry this template forward. If you set up runs on the board, with this bowling attack we can defend well. We will of course decide based on conditions. There is a lot of quality in this side.

Shoaib Malik is the Player of the Match for his 61-ball 81.

"In the middle overs, Sri Lanka were bowling well, so strike rotation was key," he says. "I knew I could cover up in the end. Credit to Babar and Hafeez. That was the innings that gave us the confidence. End of the day, the bowlers did pretty well. Being an experienced player, it's my responsibility to turn up when things are down. I didn't take any pressure. My role was to rotate strike. Those few boundaries helped our total."

Upul Tharanga: Pakistan batted really well. At one stage, we thought we could restrict them to below 270. We haven't batted to potential in the last few series, we haven't been able to bat 50 overs. It's time we deliver.

Sarfraz is mindful of the fifty, so brings in the field. There's cover, short third man, point, mid-off, mid-on, midwicket. This should be fun