The Lankans Lift the Trophy

If Nehra had completed his quota of 10 overs, India might have lifted the trophy? Oh come on, let’s not discuss the ifs and buts. The truth is, the Lankans for sure played much better cricket and the way they played they deserved the trophy.

I strongly believe that the Indians players should be indebted to Suresh Raina as he was the one who made the final match ‘worth watching’ from the Indian perspective. The openers were in some sort of hurry as the Indian scorecard read 60/5 out of which 42 was Sehwag’s contribution. This was followed by a century partnership between Raina and Jadeja who took the initiative to reconstruct the Indian innings. Raina played a master innings of 106 runs and helped his side score a total of 245 runs.

Nehra bowled a brilliant first over and was rewarded with the wicket of Tharanga. Tharanga scored his second consecutive duck. It was in the third over that Nehra pulled up some muscle strain and was not available for the rest of the innings. The second wicket partnership of 93 runs was as expected a crucial one between Dilshan and Sangakara. Later on everybody from the Lankan team contributed to the chase and Mahela Jayawardene score three consecutive boundaries to lift the trophy for his side. He returned unbeaten scoring 71*.

The Lankan scoreboard- 0, 49, 55, 71*, 27, 18, 17, 6* definitely had more team effort than the Indian scoreboard-  42, 0, 2, 0, 14, 106, 38, 11, 16, 2*, 4. The Lankans bowlers shattered the top five batsmen after which the kind of depth they have in their batting line up 246 was always an easy chase for them.

After the match I kept on thinking how long can India survive on its world famous batting line up? Do we have bowlers who are real match winners? We compete to be the No. 1 in the world but do we have a bowler who can bowl consistently with an average speed of 150kmps? Another point, where are all those Yorkers, bouncers and slower one’s that add variety to any bowling attack? Are we saving all these as surprises for the World Cup? As according to me these aren’t the strategies of a champion team for sure. It’s the time to give it an afterthought.

Man of the series – Kumar Sangakarra

Man of the Match – Nuvan Kulasekara

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