Hardly anything more than an academic exercise, India look still like learners with the road ahead of them. But it is the Sri Lankans who still need to have their training wheels on.
The fifth and final match of the one day series between Sri Lanka and India was for all practical purposes, a dead affair. But by no means was it a waste of time for either team. While India have held the edge, there are still areas that could have been bettered far better than the series victory would suggest. But for Sri Lanka, it was not so much about national pride as much as it was about trying to gain some confidence and working towards winning as a unit.
Pragyan Ojha was put in instead of Harbhajan Singh and R.P. Singh brought in for Praveen Kumar. It may have seemed an opportunity to rotate a few players. But this was not an exercise out of sheer boredom. This is the phase of learning in the build up towards the World Cup and India could not let loose of an opportunity even in the one day if professionalism has anything to do with it.
Splendour with ball and bat:
Mahela Jayawardene sounded anguished and it was for a real reason. He has been doing much of the holding job with the bat. But there have few who survived to tell the tale with him. With the fate of the series out of the way, Sri Lankan wrung three changes with Mahela Udawatte coming to do the batting job, and doing a fairly decent job as well. With the early loss of Sanath Jayasuriya, Malinda Warnapura and Udawatte put up a seventy-eight run partnership that allowed Sri Lanka to escape from the early hiccup.
But Sri Lanka found themselves in a familiar position at four for eighty-two. Small respite from Kapugedera, Jehan Mubarak and Thilan Thushara injected life into the proceedings with fourteen overs to go. Mubarak missed out on a half century but Thushara had one to show for his innovation, and belligerence.
Sri Lanka finished with 227 on board. But any total will be a tricky position more for the Sri Lankans than the Indians because the hosts have decided to rest their 400 plus wicket men, Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan. This should be another interesting phase in the match.
