Lanka awesome as India crumble
Prem Panicker
They say winning creates its own momentum. If the Sri Lankans these days are anything to go by, that momentum has built into an avalanche that looks to sweep everything before it.
One thing set this particular win apart from other recent Lankan efforts, and that is the fact that this win was pretty much a one man effort - and that man, Arjuna Ranatunga. Having inserted India after winning the toss, he handled his bowlers and fielders superbly, keeping the pressure on the batting side right through the innings and ensuring that India didn't post a tough target. And when Sri Lanka, in the chase, lost both Jayasuriya and Aravinda D'Silva - architects of so many of their recent wins - before the scoreboard had got into double figures, Ranatunga came out and did exactly what he had to, to take his team past the winning post.
Earlier, in the morning, Sachin Tendulkar looked in ominous touch, stroking easily to 21 off 28 balls. To my mind, this was the point when Ranatunga's captaincy skills first showed through. Suddenly, every ball necessitated a field adjustment, every other ball the bowler saw something wrong with the shape of the ball - the tactic was obviously to slow things right down. Some batsmen, when they are on song, they like the tempo going, the ball coming at them, the strokes flowing - Ranatunga effectively threw a wet blanket on Sachin'e ebullience with his go-slow ploy.
Ganguly, meanwhile, after stroking two fluent boundaries, did what he, unfortunately, is rather too prone to doing - stepping back onto his stumps, and using the bat like a lacrosse stick to pick the ball up and cart it over the onside field. On a wicket where the ball wasn't quite coming on, the miscue was inevitable, and Dharmasena at mid on didn't have to move an inch.
Meanwhile, the go-slow apparently told on Tendulkar. Where, earlier, he had consciously eschemed his flashes outside off, he came dancing down to Vaas after yet another of those interruptions for a "ball inspection". The ball was typical Vaas - angling across, pitching on off and moving back in off the seam - the kind you play straight to, or perished. Sachin went across the line, missed, and was bowled.
And around here, the madness started. Saba Karim was upped in the order as pinch hitter. Fair enough. But for that ploy to work, the man has to get strike - and I counted four balls that he actually faced in the first four overs he was at the wicket. At first the culprit was Sachin, and on his departure, Rahul Dravid. And Karim ended up looking so out of sorts that his dismissal, hitting all over one from Jayasuriya, came as something of a relief.
Rahul Dravid confuses me. On the one hand, the felicity of his strokeplay all round the wicket, and his sheer competence, is admirable. But what foxes me is this - how, given that when he wants to, he seems able to play strokes from the word go, does he get into ruts like today's, where three runs come off the first 30 balls?
True, he did accelerate smoothly later and got his last 40 runs at a run a ball - but his earlier inactivity meant that India, at 30 overs, was 100 for three. And that kills a side right there, no matter what you do after. More so when you are up against a team that has patented the art of the one day chase.
To a lesser extent, the same was true of Azhar. Once he got the bit between his teeth, towards the end of the innings, he stroked with a power and glory that recalled the Azhar of old. And his 81 off 103 today, with four fours and two sixes, is as good a comeback innings as any you would want to see. But he and Dravid, far and away the highest scorers for India, would have done the team cause much more good if, during the phase between the 15th to the 30th over, the two had made more of an attempt to work singles, to rotate strike - a must, on a wicket where the ball was not coming on to the bat, and hence made forcing strokeplay difficult.
True, all the Lankan spinners got turn from the wicket. True, the fielding was top class, and Aravinda D'Silva seemed to have multiplied by some magic, so that he was here, there, everywhere the ball was. But the fact that singles were possible is proved by the ease with which both Dravid and Azhar found them towards the end, against the same bowling and fielding. So how explain that huge lull in the middle, just when a lull was the last thing India could afford?
Search me - I have no answers for that conundrum.
Strategic thinking, India-style, borders on the schoolboyish. Seeing that off spinners were operating, Robin Singh was pushed up the order ahead of Ajay Jadeja. It took Ranatunga just one over to negate that strategy - by bringing back the left arm fast bowler to counter the left handed batsman. That little episode reminded me of the time I, while still in school, tried a game of chess against Manuel Aaron - purely on the strength of the fact that his son Arvind was my schoolmate, and hence I had access to the father. Not an experience I care to recall with any great deal of pleasure, and I am sure the Indian think tank isn't too happy with its "strategy" here, either.
Jadeja, coming in with just three overs to go, predictably failed to get going. Kumble made amends, however, and Azhar with some lusty blows in the final overs saw India through to 227.
Not the kind of total that you want to set a side like the Lankans, but enough to have made things interesting - if, that is, India didn't have what, today, ranks as the worst bowling attack in the game.
Prasad struck twice, with the first ball of his first and second overs, the one removing Jayasuriya who went for his favourite flick off the pads to backward square, to be caught superbly on the line by Dravid, and the other to remove Aravinda as he drove at a widish ball without quite getting there, for Karim to start moving a fraction late, but then to make amends with a lovely take low to his right. 9/2 for the Lankans - with, mind you, a batting lineup lacking Tillekeratne - provided a good platform for a fightback by the Indians. Who promptly proceeded to make a mess of it with some apalling all round cricket.
What, for instance, was Kuruvilla doing, in his extended first spell, bowling off a four step run up and either drifting wide of the stumps, or bowling straight as a string on off stump for the batsmen to steer into the gaps? This is the start of a season, so he surely couldn't be tired out? And if he was - or even if he has some niggling little injury or ache - then the better ploy was to take him out of the attack and give him a rest?
I am not arguing that this lost the game for India. But between Kuruvilla bowling up and down stuff and Prasad, a fraction overeager after his first two successes and looking like he thought he could roll up the rest of the Lankan batting in a jiffy, straying all over the shop floor, Messers Ranatunga and Atapattu got the quota of bad balls they needed to get some strokes in the middle, and to keep the run rate up there despite the loss of early wickets. Thus, despite being 9/2 down, Sri Lanka were 25/2 in 5 overs, 48/2 in 10.
Then there is the Kumble factor. His body language these days is of a man who is totally, completely lacking in confidence. Fine, if he is your vice captain, then you play him - but I would think that at the very least, the team would rally to support, to encourage the man who is, as per the records, your best strike bowler? No. Kumble shook his head, muttered, walked about like a man who had just received notice of death - and the rest of the team left him to it.
11 players are 11 players. What makes a team is when the 11 come together to lift each other, to egg each other on, to spur one another to their peak, and beyond. Unfortunately, none of that was on view here.
Noel David bowled well, getting turn and in each of his three spells, proving the only bowler in the Indian side who could trouble Ranatunga. Robin Singh did as well as he could, getting in two quick strikes in the middle to get rid of both Atapattu, who was not quite his fluent-stroking self today, and Mahanama, who seems like he is going through a bad patch. Ganguly got three overs, bowled a few good balls and the odd bad one, but had the misfortune of bowling to Ranatunga at a time when it looked like even a court injunction couldn't stop the Lankan captain.
And that brings us to Ranatunga's own innings. Batting as low as he does - and that too in a team filled with supreme batting talents - the Lankan captain rarely has an opportunity to play a long innings. Today he proved that he could take his place in the number three slot, if he wanted to, and be right at home. Early on in his innings, he was calculated belligerence, reading the field right, spotting where the fielders weren't patrolling the deep and deliberately hitting up and over. Once the restrictions were put in place, he nudged, pushed, glided, and found runs to any part of the field, off any bowler, at will.
What impressed me most though was his running between the wickets. Ranatunga has a habit of pushing to the deep fielder, tucking his bat under his arm and walking gently across to the other end like a septuagenarian out for a gentle post-prandial stroll. But give him the slightest whiff of a misfield, and he takes off like a startled hare, converting a single into a tight two and what is more, often going to the danger end himself, and making his ground with ease.
Very, very easy to underestimate this man. And as he proved today in batting his side past the winning posts and scoring over half his team's total, very, very dangerous.
Lanka, with two wins in two outings, now go through into the finals irrespective of what they do against Bangladesh. Meanwhile, for India, it is an all too familiar position - facing Pakistan on Sunday, with the knowledge that they have to do, or die.
Scoreboard
|
