Monday, February 16, 2009

Sri Lanka Did The Expected

Well after losing the one day series to the visitors, Sri Lanka should have made up its mind to get up from the land of dreams and bring them into reality whatsoever. But, it looked that the SriLankans never ever wanted that to happen. For, forget about pocketing the T20 game they never did anything seriously in the match to trouble India. The times where India were found reeling was due to the fact that they made a mess of themselves and not because of some beautiful bowling from the Sri Lankan bowlers. So, it would not be wrong if one could say that even this match was one sided.

India winning against all odds has become a habit the day since the Aussie domination has started declining. And the only competent for India being South Africa, a series against the same is no where in the near future. Anyway, thats a different issue altogether. And, coming to the match, a close look at the Sri Lankan scorecard would suggest us that they did play a decent batting. But, is this enough in a T20 game? Just think yourself. India used exactly 5 bowlers who bowled their allotted 4 overs each. Meaning that the Indian captain never required the presense of a part time bowler.

Not exactly. The Sri Lankan batsmen never wanted or never forced Mahendra Singh Dhoni to go in for either Virender Sehwag or Yuvraj Singh to tackle the Sri Lankan batsmen. And instead went in for Ravindra Jadeja who was playing his maiden T20 match. This was the fate of the Sri Lankan team. The Indian bowlers never sufferred at the hands of the Sri Lankan batsmen whatsoever. And neither did the Indian batsmen against the Sri Lankan bowlers. They had plans for every bowler who would make it to the Indian batsmen. If not, what made Mahela Jayawardane go in for seven bowlers?

The only players who never had a ball were the captain himself who seldom bowls and the wicket keeper, whom if you ask him to bowl would show you replays when the ball was given to his hand. But, please don't laugh when that happens. And despite all these, Mahela Jayawardane could not stop the Indian batsmen nor could he stop himself from going first to the presentation party to have a word with Arun Lal. And this I guess was probably the one which prompted him to announce his retirement from captaincy. Not a bad move at all. There is Kumara Sangakkara ready in all aspects. I really pity the Sri Lankan team.

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