Kumar Sangakkara

Momentum hasn’t made its presence felt at the ongoing tri-series in Sri Lanka. It has either been everything or nothing for all the three teams in each of the games. Keeping that in mind, there will be no favoured team as such when India take on Sri Lanka in yet another series final on Saturday. Whatever the result, both teams, as well as the spectators from both nations will heave a sigh of relief that the two teams won’t face each other very soon after this summit clash.

The Lankans may seem to have the slight advantage since they are playing at home, and also from the fact that their team wears a more balanced look compared to their familiar opponents. Unfortunately, though, recent history goes against them as the Indians have upstaged them in two tournaments in the last year or so. And thus, the home team will be keen to set the record straight this time round.

A glance at the two teams and the Lankans would definitely feel more confident this time round. They will be playing an injury-free side, with most of the players in form as well. After all, they upset India by a huge margin in their last game. A blessing in disguise for the Lankans is that Tillakaratne Dilshan hasn’t fired to the best of his potential as yet. The home team will be hoping he has reserved his best for the last. A lot can be expected from the experienced duo of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. If they fire, the lower order will become doubly dangerous.

Special mention needs to be made of the two all-rounders in the Lankan side. Angelo Mathews and Thisara Perera – one a batting all-rounder and the other a bowling – lend enviable balance to the line up. What’s more Perera will be on a high following his five-for against the same opponent in the last league game, and while Mathews is yet to make a genuine impression, with his versatile skill, one is more or less assured that he can contribute in some manner or the other. The script only gets more pleasing as even Chamara Silva impressed in the one chance he got.

The bowling should be the last of Lanka’s worries at the moment. With Nuwan Kulasekara, Lasith Malinga and Suraj Randiv preceding Mathews and Perera and all three among the wickets, skipper Sangakkara should be feeling highly assured of a good show. And so, if everything falls into place for them on the d-day, India could be in for a tough time.

Virender Sehwag

Shifting focus to India, there need to be thankful to Virender Sehwag, who has somehow managed to keep India afloat in the series. With two match-winning scores, one while chasing (very unlike Sehwag) and the other while setting a target, the Delhi dynamo has been India’s one man army with the bat so far. The positive for the Lankans is that Sehwag is due for a failure, if they want to look at it that way. But then, with the maverick Indian opener, the law of averages theory doesn’t work, so there is no guarantee of what Sehwag will dish out on the day. One thing is for sure though, he won’t die wondering.

What Sehwag desperately needs is some support from the other end. It would be unfair to blame Dinesh Karthik for his failures since is just a makeshift and is trying to do a job for his team. However, India cannot afford to lose quick wickets in the final as well. Also, it is important for them to abandon the part-time theory and look for proper opening batsmen, may be someone like a Murli Vijay in case Sachin, Sehwag and Gambhir are absent, at least when the ball is moving around.

Another worrying aspect about the Indians has been the performance of their young batsmen. While Virat Kohli can be excused considering he hasn’t had a permanent spot of late, the same cannot be said of Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja. Despite being given ample opportunities, and a somewhat unfairly long run considering there are other youngsters around, they haven’t lived up to the potential. Jadeja has been decent with the bat but hasn’t proved worthy of a number seven till date. Sharma, on the other hand, is just not learning from the mistakes, which is a most worrisome aspect as far as India is concerned.

Rather ironically, the bowling has fared better, but that has had more to do with the conditions. Still Praveen Kumar’s early strikes in most of the games has given the bowling attack a potent look. Further, Ashish Nehra and Ishant Sharma too have contributed, and Munaf Patel’s success against the Kiwis could mean that he could be risked in the final, which would mean a four-pronged pace attack again.
All said and done, one only hopes that the conditions don’t play an overtly important role in determining the result, and also that the series of one-sided games is brought to a halt.

However, talking about cricket, there were many new players picked by the franchisees to play this season. Let’s review the prospects of the two bottom-ranked teams last season -

1) Kolkata Knight Riders

KKR is one of the most popular teams in the tournament. However, the last season was forgettable as they finished 8th.

Kolkata have a new coach in Dav Whatmore who backs Sourav Ganguly to the fullest. Who wouldn’t remember Whatmore helping an underdog Sri Lankan team to the 1996 World Cup win? Who knows, Whatmore can do the same with Kolkata by winning the IPL.

And, Ganguly, the team’s icon player, is back as captain. ‘Dada’ is a true leader as he can inspire players to give their 100% on the field and is the darling of the team. Ganguly and Whatmore’s combination would be the one to watch out for in the IPL 3.

Kolkata looks formidable with additions of England’s Owais Shah and India’s Manoj Tiwary who can add depth to the middle-order. Shane Bond, New Zealand’s fast bowler was purchased for $750,000 in the auction this year. Ganguly has the option of allowing Bond to open the bowling with Ishant Sharma, therefore making a dream opening pair. Other bowlers like Ajit Agarkar, Ashok Dinda, Murali Kartik and Ajantha Mendis make Kolkata no underdogs.

Batting-wise, the Victorian duo of Brad Hodge and David Hussey can’t be sidelined. Hodge was the top-scorer for Kolkata in South Africa whereas Hussey is a good finisher. Chris Gayle and Sourav Ganguly can make a good opening pair. This provided if they are supported by Laxmi Shukla, Wriddhiman Saha and Rohan Gavaskar. Brendon McCullum is unavailable due to international commitments and Australian captain Ricky Ponting’s contract has been bought out. But this shouldn’t affect the team much.

The pattern in the IPL suggests that teams who have been considered as underdogs have gone on to win the tournament. Rajasthan Royals in the first season and then the bottom ranked team of the same season Deccan Chargers prevailed in the second season. So, Kolkata can take heart from this. They have a chance to enter the top four this season, if not win which could give them a ticket to the Champions League 2010.

2) Mumbai Indians

Despite finishing second-last in South Africa, Mumbai have shown that they are a team that deserves to be ranked in the top four. They missed out on the semi finals in the first season, as they ended at the 5th spot, which was played in India.

The franchisee captured West Indies star all-rounder Kieron Pollard for $750000 this year, making him the costliest player ever perhaps.

They have got an enviable batting line-up with captain Sachin Tendulkar opening the batting with another veteran, Sanath Jayasuriya. Followed by the West Indies duo of Pollard and Dwayne Bravo. JP Duminy is South Africa’s star with the bat as well as on the field. In bowling, Lasith Malinga was one of the highest wicket-takers last season in South Africa. Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh make Mumbai’s bowling attack threatening, as both of them are experienced and excellent T-20 bowlers.

Indian youngsters however are strength to this team. Ajinkya Rahane is Mumbai’s latest talent, Dhawal Kulkarni who is an in-form bowler who helped Mumbai win the Ranji Trophy, Abhishek Nayar who can be a real force with the bat, Harshal Patel, the U-19 player is a good pick this season. England all-rounder Graham Napier and Indian spinner Chaitanya Nanda played a few games in South Africa and represent the team’s strong bench strength.

However, Mumbai’s perennial weakness is that there have no experienced wicket-keeper. Pinal Shah and Yogesh Takawale didn’t impress in the two seasons. Luke Ronchi is more of a batsman than a wicketkeeper.

Another issue which is troubling is their peculiar ability of losing matches towards the end of the IPL. This shows that Mumbai’s performance goes down in a nervous situation. Can Tendulkar use his magical influence to make his team win? Well, he can as long as the players believe in their abilities and work as a cohesive unit, and not depend on individual success.

Gambhir, who was due for a big score, stood up to the challenge, like he has so often done in the last 12 months. Despite losing the openers early to the pacy Suranga Lakmal, who extracted substantial bounce from the track, the southpaw saw to it that India never fell behind the required run-rate. It helped that Lakmal did not get an inch of support from the other pacemen. Lasith Malinga bowled like a debutant while the actual debutant, Thissara Perera, had a baptism by fire. If Gambhir was excellent in constructing his innings, Kolhi was equally impressive. This writer had mentioned in his earlier piece that Kolhi needed to learn from his mistakes and convert starts into substantial scores. At the Eden Gardens he did just that as the hunger to get a hundred was evident in the manner in which he went about constructing his innings.

The best part of the Kolhi-Gambhir association was that they complemented each other perfectly during their record third-wicket partnership. Both ran brilliantly between the wickets and stole a number of twos, even when the ball had not crossed the 30-yard circle. And they rotated the strike with effervescent ease. The job was made easier for the duo, as a number of boundary balls were on offer. Just like the singles and twos, they did not allow any of the opportunities to pass by. Even so, they managed to play rather risk-free cricket.

Against spinner Suraj Randiv, who was the best bowler on show for the Lankans once more, they were prepared to deal in singles. The fact that the ball did not turn owing to the dew factor meant Gambhir could easily clip the ball on the on side, unlike at Cuttack where the stroke cost him his wicket. As for Kolhi, his tendency to move across the stumps has often led to his downfall. But, on this day, there was no stopping him as he middled everything enroute to his maiden ODI hundred. That the innings came under trying circumstances with hold him in good stead for the future games.

Unlike their batting, the bowling effort was disappointing yet again. Ishant Sharma continued to flatter and deceive, Ashish Nehra bowled well only in patches and while Zaheer Khan put up a better effort, he was still not at his best. For a change, there was a significant improvement in their fielding effort. At the end of the day though, two magnificent tons were enough for India to chinch yet another ODI series win over Lanka and set off the Christmas festivities in the country.

Sadly for the visitors, they will be handicapped by the loss of ace spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, who missed the opening one-dayer, and pacer Dilhara Fernando. Both of them have been ruled out of the series which means Sri Lanka will be forced field some rookies in this crucial match. That said they would do well to exhibit some faith in the other spinner in the side, Ajantha Mendis. Agreed, he has been a shadow of the sensation that spun world cricket upside down last year, but the team managed needs to show faith in him and back his ability to deliver. Furthermore, the Lankans would be praying for the eccentric Lasith Malinga to be fit for the game as his return would add some much-needed teeth to the visitors’ bowling line-up even on benign Indian pitches.

Rajkot may have been a batsman’s paradise. Still, one has to accept that there was some sensational display from both sides. Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar set the tone for the ODI series with a blistering opening salvo, while MS Dhoni delivered the backup punch with such alacrity that the Lankan bowlers were made to look absolutely prosaic.

However, if one thought India had done enough to seal the deal, it was a not to be. What Indians did well, Sri Lanka did equally well, even better at the start to be honest. Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga matched Sehwag and Tendulkar stroke for stroke and went on to outdo them. The skipper Kumar Sangakkara then joined in the fun and cleared the fence with such unhurried ease that the target looked well within reach. Bizarre as it may sound, one has got to say that the Lankans should have achieved the target rather easily considering the position they were in at the end of 35 overs. But, the pressure got to them and eventually they let India get out of jail.

While the batters will head into Nagpur high on confidence, the same cannot be said about the bowlers. The pacers from both sides were slammed for plenty and the spinners only did slightly better, Harbhajan Singh being the sole exception. He was the best bowler on display from either side. Additionally, the fielding performance of both sides is also a major worry, with catches being dropped left, right and centre. And with another run feast on the cards, the Nagpur tussle might well be decided on the basis of which side bowls and fields better.

Sri Lankan innings was fluctuating, in 15th over Lankans were at 98 runs off 3 wickets, reaching above 150 runs total was somewhat difficult on slower and bowler friendly pitch of Oval. But in the last five overs with the DIlshan on the field Lankans knocked whopping 60 runs, taking total to 158 runs off 5 wickets. Dilshan innings was the major contribution to the total, rest the Lankans batsmen were not able to put up better support. Sanath Jayasuriya (24), Kumar Sangakkara (0), Mahela Jayawardena (2), Chamara Silva (11) and Jehan Mubarak (7) were not able to sustain on field and support to Dilshan. Even though Dilshan remain consistent without any support from other teammates throughout the innings and aggregated challenging score of 158 runs on slower pitch like Oval.

As the Gayle’s bowler were being attributed mystique and powerful mix of spinners and pacers, all proved futile in front of Dilshan. Gayle’s bowlers were not able to confine Dilshan and still the bowling was commendable, every boundary was tough though but Dilshan knocks showed it lot easier. Tight field by Gayle’s company was commendable and fielders were diving for every single shoot to prevent boundaries even two’s. Jerome Taylor, Sulleman Benn , and Kieron Pollard took 1-1 wicket and Dwayne Bravo expensive though took 2 wickets.

West Indians came to bat to face 159 runs target; 159 runs target was pretty much tough on the slower pitch of Oval still it was expected from Indies, they would be tough competition. But the disaster happened Angelo Mathews took 3 wickets in very first over, Indies were dumbfounded. Roaring audience in support of Lankans with uninterrupted commentary started coming from commentary box of Lankans making it to the finals. Gayle (63) was the only batsman to sustain on the pitch rest batting line up of Indies felled like the stock rates on the Wall Street.

Sri Lankans bowlers and Dilshan were remarkable and outstanding in the last semifinal, purely out doing Indies in every aspect of the game. Angelo Mathews and Star Player Muttiah Muralidaran took 3-3 wickets, Ajantha Mendis took 2 wickets and Isuru Udana and Lasith Malinga took 1-1 wicket. Lankans jamboree of bowlers were superb and astounding; Lankans bowlers bowled every type of bowling with Yorkers to off spin, leg spin and short balls with the better line and length gave no room to Indies to go for the shoots.

Malinga taking the last wicket in the 17th over Indies were all out on 101 runs and Lankans winning the match by big margin of 57 runs.