In the last test series between India and Sri Lanka, all of us were witness to the carnage that Sehwag and Dilshan unleashed on the respective bowlers. The bowlers had no clue to the way the two batsmen played in the series.
Today, Chris Gayle repeated the dose for the second time on the hapless Aussie bowlers. His innings has kept his often-beaten team still in the hunt!!!
The three of them are changing the way opening batsmen are facing the new-ball bowlers. It could be due to various reasons:
The impact of ODI (and more so, T20) is making the batsmen play more strokes, thus increasing their strike-rates.
The test teams are planning to take early advantage of the game to increase the chances of winning the match.
The quality of openings bowlers have reduced drastically after the retirements of greats like Mcgrath, Donald and Co.
Whoever won the match today, the curator had to be blamed for the run-riot that occured in Rajkot. The pitch did not help the bowlers at any point of the match. This pitch, coupled with the average fielding/catching performances by the teams made sure that there would be a high-scoring, close match. Two players, very similar in approach, on both sides took this opportunity to score a big century each. The presence of bowlers probably did not matter - it could be a bowling machine being operated, such was the dominance. Long ago, India had scored 299 in 40 overs in an ODI against Sri Lanka only for Roshan Mahanama to play a great innings to get them close to the winning post. Dilshan played a similar blinder to bring back the confidence of the Lankans after the first innings massacre but had to suffer the same fate as Roshan!!!
Sehwag has been criticised often that he did not play ODI's as per his potential or that he did not have the same success in ODIs as much he had in test matches. His big ton in the test match against Sri Lanka was the starting point - Gary Kirsten had asked him to spend time at the crease early, against hitting from ball one. Once he became comfortable, the runs would flow automatically. He almost scored his third triple ton. Today, he scored his highest in ODI matches. Sachin Tendulkar was there at the crease to calm him down and offer advice where required - this worked like a charm. Tendulkar himself was no less aggressive - he was matching Sehwag with the runs till he fell in a very familiar manner against Dilahara Fernando.
Sehwag continued and one felt that he would reach his double century (that Sachin had remarked earlier this year). The power-play is one introduction that has confused the players on the field - especially the batsmen. They feel that it is the right to score more runs than normal and take risks unncessary. Here, the team was going at a rate of 8.5 and more, but still the power-play introduction resulted in fall of wickets (in fact, contributing to a middle-order slump). Till then, MS Dhoni had matched Sehwag's run-rate.
Since becoming a captain, MSD had reduced his strike-rate to cut out the risks and play percentage cricket (ones and twos) before exploding at the end. Here, he had a long batting line-up to follow and could unleash his well-known shots. The only complaint (if one had any) was that Gambhir was not suited at the role he came out to play - this led to his early fall. But, no grouses anyway - the total was more than what India would have planned at the beginning of the match. Sri Lanka's bowlers had no role to play in the Indian innings - there was no specialist spinner and Sangakkara had to depend on his quicker bowlers and part-timers to help out.
Sri Lanka started on a similar note. If Sehwag waited initially and started his heroics, Dilshan followed a similar pattern. He left the big shots to Tharanga while he settled down. Once ready, he unleashed his range of strokes to take the breath (and noise) away from the Indians. The bowlers did not know where to bowl, such was his dominance. Dhoni tried out various options but none of them could make any impact. MSD was getting enough dose of his own medicine.
The situation had changed to such an extent that it resembled a T20 match after 30 overs - 164 required in 20 overs, nine wickets in hand, five Powerplay overs. Advantage Sri Lanka unless India grabbed two or three wickets quickly. Dilshan settled down after the initial flurry and got easy boundaries almost every over. This meant that his partners could ease in as well. Sangakkara came out and continued his good form from the T20 matches. It was no surprise that the man can bat but to destroy the opposition by hitting orthodox shots was something out of the ordinary. His dismissal (and couple of other wickets) made the match close. But, the long batting line-up of Sri Lanka was not to be disappointed.
Credit needs to be given to Harbhajan Singh for having the best run-rate (in terms of least runs given) among the bowlers on both sides. Zaheer and Nehra came back after a poor start to bring back India's chances in the last few overs. They attacked the batsmen by bowling yorkers (late swinging) and reduced the runs scored to a minimum. The fielders came into their actual form as well, bagging two run-outs at a crucial time. This was perhaps the turning point of the match. The others could not do much in the match - maybe MSD should start bowling now!!!
Hopefully, the next few matches will have pitches that support the bowlers also. It is also time for the real Mike Young to stand up please.
The Indian team starts its ODI series against Sri Lanka after the successful test series and evenly-contested T20 series. The Indians must feel confident about winning the series, considering the difference between the two teams in the ICC Rankings.
The return of Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan will strengthen the team, adding great experience to the team. More than the batting, the Indian team needs the return of the bowlers to increase their chances. Yuvraj Singh might be missing from the team, which is a definite negative.
The batting order looks settled with Sehwag, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Raina (if Yuvraj is not in the eleven), MS Dhoni at the top. Ravindra Jadeja, Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh form the allrounders who can contribute to both the departments. Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra will be the opening bowlers for the Indian team. There is space for one more batsman or allrounder in the team and one wonders who will be the lucky one (Virat Kohli seems to be the front-runner).
The batting of Sri Lanka seems to be in a strong shape also - Jayasuriya, Dilshan followed by Sangakkara and Jayawardene and Kapugedera was good enough to touch 200 in both the T20 matches. The Sri Lankan team seems to miss the services of a good spinner (there was just one over by a spinner in the last T20). Mendis seems to be off form while it is not known how much Murali has recovered. Malinga also might miss the match, which will put the pressure squarely on the Lankans.
All in all, a good series in the reckoning - the Indians are my favorites to win convincingly.
India seems to be continuing their form from their previous match, both in the bowling and fielding areas. The match started off in the same way as Nagpur - wayward bowling, fours and sixes aplenty in the first 10 overs. The run-rate hardly came below 11-12 runs per over for Sri Lanka - thus was their dominance. Sangakkara, again, showed their worth with shots that were classy as well as effective.
Was it the lights that caused the catches to be dropped? Or was it the innovative methods of Young that they are not able to pick up (are they not picking his accent)? Whatever the reason maybe, there were far too many of them dropped. Coupled with the number of wides that were bowled by the bowlers, the Indians had no means to stop the marauding Lankans. Somehow, the Indians seem to have totally missed the plot in T20s, in the bowling & fielding division at least.
The Indian openers came out in a determined fashion to take risks and keep the run-rate going towards the required run-rate. The running was haywire while the shots did not come off Gambhir's middle of the bat. Sehwag, however, did well and scored the big shots to keep the scorecard ticking. Fifty partnerships for the first two wickets set up the chase very well.
In came Yuvraj, at the fall of Sehwag's wicket. He put on 80 runs with MS Dhoni in less than 6 overs with his typical shots - bent knee and lofted shots in the V (mostly sixes). The Sri Lankan fielders had no respite - even they followed the Indians by dropping many chances. I feel that it is the wind or the lights or the slippery surface within the ground that made them drop the catches. MSD got out during the last mile of the chase but the matter was just a formality by then. Couple of wickets fell at the end but not impacting the final result.
The series was squared with a convincing batting performance but the bowling/fielding of the Indians left a lot to be desired.
Background - India, with new faces and a brave fresh captain, won the T20 World Cup in South Africa. The win, started the boom of T20 matches marketed innovatively by Lalit Modi as the IPL circus. The players made truckloads of money because of the business model of the IPL. In T20 internationals however, the team has been losing almost every other match against significant opposition.
The present - India thrashed Sri Lanka by an innings and more to get to the No.1 slot. This was one of the achievements that was really treasured by the current pack as well as the ones who were part of the team in the near past. Of course, the entire nation enjoyed the achievement with media going overboard as usual.
The ODI pinnacle is the one that is missing in the Indian team's cabinet. Of course, they were No.1 in the ICC rankings also, but the World Cup has been absent from 1983 onwards.
Hence, the question for the team is whether the focus going forward will be only on the ODI matches. The scheduling of test matches also does not help the Indians. MS Dhoni and Gary Kirsten might have the answers.
India lost to Sri Lanka in the first T20 match at Nagpur.
Sangakkara played a brilliant innings to take the team to a massive total. The catching was terrible and the Indians had no clue on how to stop the Lankans. The Indians started off on a good note with Gambhir thrashing the bowlers to all sides. Once he was dismissed, India went on a free-fall that could not be stopped.
The comments from the captains - Kumar Sangakkara : "The wicket was pretty good to bat on. What set us up was that the two openers saw through the six overs, even though they didn't get off to a flying start. We were outstanding in the first 16 overs, we need to a bit more ruthless and finish them off. Great all-round performance, everyone fought hard and showed hunger to win."
MS Dhoni : "At least we were not missing catches before. We are not a brilliant fielding side, but we are not known to dropping catches. It's getting difficult for us to get into T20 groove. Most of us treat them as warm-up for ODIs."
The action shifts from the 5 day matches to a 3-hour one. Sri Lanka would have enjoyed the break from the Mumbai test and renewed their energies - the coach and the support staff would have been over-worked during this time to ensure that the negative energies are totally wiped off the mind of the Lankans. The ODI/T20 specialists who have flown in recently will also lift the dressing room atmosphere. Muttiah Muralitharan is not likely to play because of a finger injury. Another veteran Sanath Jayasuriya will return to the fold. Others who come into the squad are Chamara Kapugedara, Chinthaka Jayasinghe, Kaushal Weeraratne, Muthumudalige Pushpakumara and Lasith Malinga.
India must have spent their time in enjoying their No.1 rankings in the test matches. Of course, T20 is a different ball-game and they seem to have slipped recently. The fact that this series is in India will help the team however. India announced the squad with 3 newcomers - R Ashwin, Ashok Dinda and Sudeep Tyagi. This seems to be more of an exercise to give them a feel of the Indian squad - a close view of how the players prepare and time to pick the minds of the seniors in the squad.
Nagpur and Mohali are the two venues and it does not matter how the pitch behaves - 40 overs is too less to figure out any changes of the character of the pitch.
MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik, Yusuf Pathan, Rohit Sharma will vie for the batting slots (7 of them). It will be a good option if Dhoni steps down for one match so that he can rest himself before the ODI series start. If not, Dinesh Karthik might be the person to lose out.
Ishant Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Sreesanth, Ashok Dinda, Sudeep Tyagi, R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha are the bowlers who will compete for 4 slots. The 3 who might be rested for the first match might be Ashish Nehra (for his poor fielding skills), Ashok Dinda, Sudeep Tyagi.
An interesting document on the ICC Rankings in retrospective on howstat site - shows that India would have been No.1 earlier also !!!
There have been many discussions on whether India deserved to be No.1. There are various articles explaining the small steps taken, the road to the pinnacle and opinions from ex-cricketers. It is a sad fact that the Indians would not play test cricket for a long time.
I thought that I would do an analysis of the situation in test matches - the table below shows the results of tests played between all the test-playing nations (Zimbabwe for obvious reasons are not considered).
The chart below shows interesting results. Each row shows the record of teams played by the ones in the different columns in the country (in 1st column for the relevant row). For example, the first row shows the results of series of South Africa in India, Australia, England, and so on. The corresponding column for South Africa (4th column) shows the performance in other countries (like Australia, India, England and so on).
Overseas tours
South Africa have lost only in Sri Lanka whereas they have drawn series in India and New Zealand.
Australia have lost to India, England
India have lost to Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Pakistan
England have lost to India, Australia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West Indies
Sri Lanka have lost to India, Australia, South Africa & drawn with England
Home series
South Africa have lost only to Australia and England
Australia recently lost to South Africa
India have drawn series against South Africa and New Zealand, lost to none
England have lost to South Africa and India.
Sri Lanka have lost to Australia only
Overall, it is a confusing scenario and obviously ICC has thought about it with the number of points. Some of the series have been played so long back that it does not justify the result currently like for example, India and New Zealand at home is a drawn series.
Based on the performance, I would say that India does justify the No.1 status.
It did not take a long time for India to wrap up the Sri Lankan innings. Zaheer Khan had a plan, that he executed to perfection. Once Sangakkara went down, it was a matter of time the others went down.
Harbhajan took the last wicket of Murali triggering off celebrations within the Indian team. This was one victory that was sweet in more ways than one. The No.1 ranking was the icing on the cake for the Indian team who have reached the peak of both test and ODI rankings in the last few months. Hopefully, they stay as the Test No.1 for a long period. The scheduling of test matches does not help the Indian team - they face Bangladesh next and then go without a test series for a long time.
The selectors should be credited for their policies on replacements - especially Sreesanth, Ojha and Murali Vijay. They should follow the same policy for the replacements of other players (even though they might be playing well as of now). Badrinath, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli are the likely batsmen to get into the test team while the bowling needs to be planned in a better way. Probably, a full-time bowling coach needs to be reinstated. The fielding is being reinforced with Mike Young in the forthcoming days.
The session dashboard shows the status at the end of the test match. Need one say more?
While watching the latest Sehwag-show, there was a doubt in my mind about his evolution as a batsman. He seemed to be a more well-rounded batsman compared to the other big knocks he had played before. Hence, this analysis is based on the wagon-wheels of the 4 big knocks that Sehwag has played in his test career.
The wagon-wheels show how Sehwag has evolved in the last 5 years. The knock in Multan shows the areas behind cover and square-leg as his prefered routes. The V in front of the wicket seems to be in minority. The off-side is the one where Sehwag showed his complete range of strokes starting from the cut over thirdman and his square drives. The leg-side sixes are the ones which he made of Saqlain (most remarkable being the one to get to his 300).
The next innings in Lahore also follows the same pattern where the favorite strokes are the cuts and cover-drives. The Pakistan bowlers had not studied the previous Multan innings - for they repeated the same mistakes and bowled to the areas that Sehwag likes a lot.
The Chennai innings was quite instrumental in reviving the image of Sehwag as a dashing batsman in his own right. This followed a phase where the bowlers all over the world had a plan on how to strangle him with balls angled to his body. Sehwag was dropped from the test side and went back to the drawing board with his long-time coach. There the transition happened and Sehwag was ready with a plan. The off-side is still prefered but the on-side strokes started to appear on the wagon-wheels against the pace bowlers also. This innings was played against Ntini, Steyn, Kallis.
The latest one against SriLanka in Mumbai shows that he has indeed become an all-round player. The strokes show a beautiful balance on either side. The leg-side strokes are the ones he has picked up recently - in fact, he played this in the IPL matches to great success.
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