Thumping Win by Men in Blue

In a keenly contested ODI series, the men in Blue emerged victorious against the Lankans. There was a lot of expectation on the Indian team following their recent ascent to Numero Uno spot in Test Cricket. The Indian team certainly lived up to the expectation and achieved a series triumph in a clinical fashion.

In the first match at Rajkot when Lankans appeared to be runaway winners following the blitzkriegs from Dilshan and Sangakara, the men in Blue pulled things back with a brilliant burst of death bowling by Zaheer and Nehra. The duo kept producing Yorkers at the death and that certainly stifled the run flow, eventually paving way for plethora of run outs which made the difference in the end. Harbhajhan played a key role in the triumph by bagging the crucial wickets of Dilshan and Jayasuriya.
In the second match at Nagpur, despite Dhoni’s heroics, Lankans prevailed thanks to Dilshan and Angelo Mathews. The fielding and bowling let Indians down in this match as some crucial errors were made at critical junctures. Following the defeat, the ban imposed on Dhoni for two matches due to slow over rate, appeared to be a succor blow for Indians.
In the third match at Cuttack, Dilshan went Hammer and Tongs from the word go and the Lankans had raced to 58 after the first four overs. Nehra struck a crucial blow by removing Dilshan and the floodgates were opened once Shewag got the better of his opposite number. The Lankans some how contrived to lose the plot from a seemingly unassailable position of 160 odd for one and folded up for a below par score of 238. Ravindra Jadeja was the pick of the bowlers with a 4 wicket haul. The target was surpassed with ease, courtesy of an unconquered knock of 96 from Sachin. He was ably supported by Shewag and Dinesh Karthick. Shewag scored lot of brownie points for his captaincy. His ability to retain poise as a captain when Dilshan was blazing around helped in instilling the belief in the team. He was willing to bite the bullet by bringing himself on when Lankans were coasting along. He also showed lot of faith in Ishant by bringing him on for a second spell after he had leaked 43 runs in 3 overs in his first spell.
In the fourth match at Eden Gardens, the law of averages finally caught up with Dilshan!!!. Following the early loss of Dilshan and Jayasuriya, Tharanga and Sangakara went about re-building the innings by forging a partnership of substance. Helped by few cameos in the end, Lankans ensured that the 300 mark was breached. 300 plus target was expected to stretch the famed Indian batting line up a lot given that Dhoni and Yuvaraj were missing for varied reason. The run chase got off to a catastrophic start with the big guns Sachin and Shewag getting out for next to nothing. The Lankans at that stage would have certainly fancied their chances as they must have felt that the Indian middle order would cave in under pressure in the absence of Dhoni and Yuvaraj. In came Kholi and together with Gambir took the contest away from the Lankans. They proved a potent combination and the dew stricken Srilankan bowlers did not have any answer. The series was won in style, befittingly by a boundary from Gambhir, he in the process had notched up his highest ODI score of 150 not out.
The fifth match at Kotla has already been chronicled enough in the media for all the wrong reasons. It has indeed been a huge dampener for the cricket fans that the final ODI had to be called off because the pitch was deemed as unsafe for a match of this stature. Thankfully the Indians had clinched the series at Eden, lest it would have been a greater shame had this happened with the series locked at 2-2. Let us hope that people at the helm of affairs work jointly to ensure that such an episode never recurs in future.
The Lankans had played their part gamely in ensuring a keenly contested series. They were handicapped to a good extent by the unavailability of likes of Muralitharan and Angelo Matthews (from third game onwards). In the context of this series, the ability of men in Blue to win the key moments in each game made the difference in the end. In all the games won by the Indians, they always had personnel who were willing to put their hands up and be counted when the situation demanded that, this attribute in essence differentiates the champions from the rest.
In this series, of the 4 completed matches, there were two instances where a score in excess of 300 was chased down and in one other instance the Lankans just fell short by 3 runs in their pursuit of 414!!!. Going by the current trend, the tribe of bowlers would soon become extinct unless ICC does something to restore the balance between bat and ball. The disturbing trend is that even the tracks in Australia and South Africa have considerably slowed down paving the way for run feast in ODIs over there as well. The ICC needs to take a hard look at the quality of wickets being prepared for ODIs as it is no fun watching bowlers being reduced to mere bowling machine waiting for their turn to get slaughtered. They could look at allowing two bouncers per over and also look at reducing the power play to 10 overs from the existing 20 overs. A true connoisseur would always love the battle between bat and ball, is ICC listening?