A Step Ahead..India

Hmm..with all critics showering the team Indian in spite of a win in the second one day international at Dambulla,it looked as though the impact of this criticism on team India had such an impact that they were desperate to prove a lot of things and this is what they did! If not for the likes of Mahela Jayawardane,the Sri Lankan team had nothing to boast about when their batting was taken into consideration.And what an opening spell ot was by the duo of Zaheer Khan and Praveen Kumar who rattled the Sri Lankan top order by taking 5 wickets between them.Sri Lanka were reeling at 94/7 after the 27th over and much did one realize that they would cross the 200 mark,which they eventually did.Thanks to some patient batting by Mahela Jayawardane..a captain's knock indeed.

And hats off to all those people who called the pitch at Colombo a batsman's heaven when both the teams out there lost all their ten wickets.And the team that batted first could not even cross the 250 run mark despite the slog over advantage in the late 40 overs.And,the team that batted second..Forget about a batting friendly wicket.The ball was found moving like a cobra towards the end of the second innings itself and,when the match progressed to the second innings the situation was even more worse that the Sri Lankan batsmen had no other choice but to lose wickets.

The going was smooth during the initial phase of the first innings which the Indian batsmen Suresh Raina and Mahendra Singh Dhoni made full use of,scoring half centuries each to post a decent total.It was really sad to see Ajantha Mendis miss out on a hattrick after claiming two wickets on successive balls during the fag end of the Indian innings.This really a magic of the toss of the match which Dhoni luckily and effortlessly won and with it the match.Sad that Chaminda Vaas could not grab his wicket number 400 even after an economical spell of 32 runs in 10 overs.

It was amazing that even the likes of Muttiah Muralitharan,upon whom the Sri Lankan team had complete dependence and expectation could not serve even half of what was expected from him.So was the case with Sanath Jayasuriya.Even juniors like Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli could not be contained by these experienced bowlers on their own track.Tuff whether to congratulate these youngsters for standing up when the opportunity arose or to condemn the experienced bowlers who could not turn their magic on even these kids.