Sport - Cricket

A splendid effort by Dhoni & Co.

The hunter became the hunted as the Sri Lankans riding high after the Test series win were overwhelmed by India at the Premadasa Stadium to complete a hat-trick of victories, thereby winning the One-Day series.

This is the maiden bilateral series triumph for India in Sri Lanka, which has garnered yet another chunk of history for the Indian skipper M.S. Dhoni.

The flamboyant skipper seems to have an uncanny knack of waltzing into record books effortlessly but one has to hand it to him for leading from the front.

A break from the hustle bustle of international cricket seemed to have rejuvenated Dhoni and he has made his point with excellent batting in the series. His crucial knocks came under different circumstances and it will be difficult to try and arrange them in a sequence in terms of importance.

The turnaround after the reversal in the first game at Dambulla is remarkable as the Indians had to deal with varying conditions, apart from having to contend with injuries to key players.

The young Virat Kohli coming to terms with international cricket is indicative of the Midas touch that Dhoni seems to have in what is seemingly a dream run that started with the victory in the T20 World Cup. Of course, a captain needs some slice of luck to succeed.

As a captain, he has gambled by sticking to a ploy of playing only four bowlers but on a pitch that was slow and assisting the spinners, Dhoni’s options were limited in that he had the choice of drafting in young Ojha or make do with Yuvraj as the fifth bowler. The vice-captain did not let his skipper down as he bowled well when the situation demanded.

The medium-pacers were outstanding throughout the series. Zaheer Khan was exceptional as he made life difficult for the Sri Lankan top-order, which was highly instrumental in pegging the hosts back. He was ably assisted by Munaf Patel and Praveen Kumar.

Munaf used his height to good advantage as he extracted enough bounce from the sluggish pitches at the Premadasa to disconcert the batsmen.

It is a credit to the medium pace trio that they were able to establish their authority over the Sri Lankan top-order batsmen who were in good nick during the Test series.

With the series decided, the final game will be of academic interest, which is rather unfortunate, as the local fans would have hoped the series to go down to the wire.

The Sri Lankans will no doubt be disappointed with their performance but I for one believe that both the teams would have been disappointed with the quality of umpiring during the series. An odd mistake here and there is acceptable but some of the decisions of Billy Doctrove would not have endeared him to the players at the receiving end.

The review system that was in place during the Test series enabled the umpires to revoke their decision if required but the lack of it during the one-dayers has only drawn attention to their peccadilloes.

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