Like a freight train coming your way

And its over.

3 games, 3 wins. And how.

At 2-24, SLs hopes of a series comeback were good.

221 runs later, it had vanished.

Unfortunately for me, I dint see the carnage. I was away on a religious pilgrimage.

OnlyΒ  to come back to see it was the SL team that was being offered as the sacrifice.

Sehwag is god. We all know that. 116. 90 balls.

You don’t stop that, you just cant. You just wait till he decides he is done, even then he will only get himself run out. Ruthless to the end.

Yuraj had bullied England at home. Came to SL with with everyone talking about how Mendis ate him up last time.

Splendid got 3 wickets for 57, Yuvraj 206 runs at 68.

Before the series I predicted that SL would gobble up the inexperienced Indian spinners.

Ojha so far has the 2nd most wickets (6) at 21 while Mendis and Murali have only 5 between them.

His average is sub 22, Mendis is north of 50 and Murali is Hussey’esque on 72.

He bowled with guile and intelligence. When he got hit around he dint panic, instead he kept flighting the ball and kept asking asking questions.

The ball today to Kapugedara was a classic left armers dismissal. It helped that Kapugedara seemed to have hit feet in quick dry cement. But the ball beat him in flight.

It had shades of Warne about it. Drifting in and then pitching on middle and leg and hitting off.

Ashish Nehra might have a bit of competition ahead for him.

We’ll talk about what went wrong for SL later.

Cuz India is coming, like James Hetfield sang, like a freight train coming your way.

In the Engine room you have Dhoni. Masterclass skipper, who has reversed his early flamboyance to be the coolest, shrewdest tactician in the game.

He had built on the team ethics Ganguly left, of being tough and ugly if you need to be. It worked for the Prince, its working for the MSD.

He has showed that he could crack under severe pressure, a place where he finds himself rarely these days, but he is learning and and has got the Indians on a winning sequence and stands at the door step of breaking the Indian record – 9.

He said they wont think about the record, but I’m sure Dhoni would love to have that notch under his belt too.

Tendulkar, Sehwag, Yuvraj form a top 3 that would scare the hell out of Alfred Hitchcock.

You have seen what happens when one of these 3 get going. Today you saw what happens when two of them go together.

Its pure brutality.

And it was against an ‘in form’ SL bowling attack.

Raina, Sharma, Pathan makes for a solid middle order.

Zaheer and Ishant are brilliant with the new ball.

Bajji and now Ojha are deadly with their fingers. (Sorry if that induced some crude imagery, well, not really)

SA and Aus might be tangoing for the 1st slot but when India comes around the mountain, its going to get ugly.

And as they say there can be only one.

10 Comments

  1. No sirrrreeeeee………..I’m very much in SL (don’t think I’ll budge for another 5 years) πŸ˜›

    February 4, 2009
    Reply
  2. 12th Man said:

    Sri Lanka narrowly escaped against Bangladesh once and against Zimbabwe twice in the recent past, though the scoreline can be misleading. They reversed the trend to a great extent in Pakistan. But the form slump of some in the middle order and the inexperienced pace attack not being able to make the early inroads is costing them. They are rebuilding and will take some time to be back to winning ways, i presume. No better time than when Dhoni is experimenting.

    February 4, 2009
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  3. insideEdge said:

    Hardly seen the series, thankfully, but SL batsmen seem clueless to rotate the strike against quick bowling.

    If Praveen Kumar was not Indian how many super slo-mo replays of his bowling action would we see every game and how many times would his action have been reported?

    February 4, 2009
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  4. raj said:

    Damith, commiserations.
    I not liking this india team much. but they winning. what to do? ugly bastards. scary, eh? new australia? they showed that with their ugly behaviour (bhajji, santh et al). now, they are replicating on field success, too? mind boggles to think that aussies might be playing the whining role in the next few years while india plays ugly bully, both on and off the field. this is good or bad? i dont know.

    February 4, 2009
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  5. raj said:

    insideEdge, if there is the slightest iota of suspicion on Praveen Kumar, Chris Broad will report him at the first available opportunity. Dont worry, man. We are in this together(India, SL, Pak, Bangladesh) – as long as the last Aussie/Englis admin remains, they will ensure any opportunity to throw mud at Asians will not be left.

    February 4, 2009
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  6. and the best part damith…i don’t think they are gonna relax even though the series is over… πŸ™‚

    February 4, 2009
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  7. abhi said:

    Damith, at 2 /24 Indians were helped in no small measure by the wayward bowling. I saw the highlights and was suprised to see the number of bad balls bowled in India’s inning. Though no complaints, I am Indian πŸ™‚

    February 5, 2009
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  8. insideEdge said:

    Raj – Chris Broad already bottled it in taking action against Yuvraj – he should have been fined for dissent.

    It was a very bad decision from the umpire but there is nothing in the laws saying you can show dissent if it’s a bad decision. Compre Yuraj reaction with that of Tendulkar who got 3 bad decisions and the way he reacted.

    February 5, 2009
    Reply
  9. raj said:

    On that, insideEdge, I am with the batsman, be it Yuvraj Singh, Mahela or even Ricky Ponting(whom I despise otherwise).
    If a player plays daft shots, he is criticised left and right and people let him know he is a muppet. Umpires like Bucknor wag fingers at Parthiv Patel when he commits a mistake as if the latter were not an international player but a nursery kid. Of course, Ricky Ponting publicly humiliates umpires by wagging fingers at them to compensate for that from the players’ side but then only he has that privilege. Nothing wrong if an umpire is publicly humiliated by a player like Yuvraj when the umpire makes a mistake

    They say players are not above the game,effing umpires arent above the game eitehr and let them stop acting like Queen Victoria who must be bowed to always.

    February 5, 2009
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