Tied India-Sri Lanka T20I Series was Just Result

In the end, the score-line of 1-1 justifies the kind of cricket that was on display in the two game T20I series. The pitches were tailor-made for allowing the batsmen to get away with murder – and more – whereas the bowlers could be proud to not concede more than eight in an over on an average. There were a couple of short spells where the bowlers did look like they did have an outside chance of being anything apart from just number-fillers, but that was too few and far between and in the end, more than 800 runs were scored in the two games at an average runs per over of more than ten.

Need to stick their hands into Glue instead of Butter:
Looking back at the just concluded T20I series between India and Sri Lanka, the one mighty factor that will probably remain etched in most cricket fans’ minds, is probably the appalling levels of fielding that were on display. It began with the Indians in the first T20I, continued with them in the second T20I as well, before managing to rub off on to the Lankans at Mohali.

The sheer numbers – of dropped catches and missed run-out chances – do not do any justice to the almost comical depths of despair that the fielding fell to. Yet, for the sake of driving home the point, India missed out on five catches and a run-out in the first game, while ‘improving’ it in the second by dropping six. Lanka then sealed the supposed pact by letting go of another couple but missing half a dozen run-out chances in the process!

Ironically, Team India had only just appointed Michael Young, as their fielding consultant for a period of two weeks. And given the display in the fielding, either this will be the last of the contracts he ever signs with the Indian side, or the signing could not have come at a better time and would probably culminate into a much longer contract.

Either way, the commentator and former Indian captain, Sunil Gavaskar had the last say in the matter when he exclaimed, “The manner in which they are fielding, they will not even catch a cold in this Mohali weather!”

‘It is almost all over for the opposition when Sangakkara sings!’
The form exhibited by the Sri Lankan skipper in the final test match at Brabourne, after four successive relative failures should have sent the warning signals to the Indian bowlers. As it turned out, either the signals were ignored, or the execution to those well-laid out plans was wayward, and the Lankan captain smashed two successive half centuries in the games to lead the side to 200 plus totals in the process. The two half centuries, incidentally, came off 21 and 29 balls respectively.

The difference in the two games was that while Chamara Kapugedera afforded him good enough support in the middle overs of their innings, his dismissal in the middle of the innings in the second T20I led to a Lankan collapse. Those nine less runs and the fact that they fielded worse in the second game ended Sri Lanka’s hopes of winning it 2-0.

The Indian fightback:
For about three out of the four innings during the series, India had been thoroughly outplayed before Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh combined well to bring India home. It was the highest ever total chased in a T20I as they had in the second game, and was abetted in no small terms by the lack of an effort exhibited by the tourists on the field.

However, credit must be afforded where its due, and the batting approach adopted by the Indian top-order was quite different from what it had in the first T20I where the batsmen barely seemed to have much strategy going in for the chase. Gautam Gambhir had provided the Indians with a start that they could have only dreamt of, but the batting display by the rest of the batsmen was nothing short of nightmare. In the second T20I, there was a healthier approach towards chasing it down, with a definite plan of how the batsmen needed to go about it, instead of smashing every ball in the air.
Match to India!