It’s a do or die game for the Lankan Lions here at the Nehru Stadium, Pune. Sri Lanka are already 3-0 down and this is one last chance of getting back into this 7 ODIs series. Can they put the jubilant Indian Side down atleast this time? The visitors indeed need to pull off something spectacular to do exactly that because all the Indian players are firing on all cylinders and everyone has been doing their part professionally.

The Toss

Rahul Dravid won the toss for the 3rd time in this series and he decided to field first considering the early 9:00 A.M. start in Pune. Sri Lanka were forced to make atleast one change from their line up and Mahela Jayawardene who took the flight to marry Christina was replaced by promising left hander Upul Tharanga. The Lankans also went for Nuwan Zoysa in place of Thilan Samaraweera who was kept as super sub. Chandana whose bowling was taken to the cleaners in Jaipur couldn’t even make it as the super sub. On the other side, India brought back Sree Santh in place of Murali Kartik and continued with Suresh Raina as the super sub. The wicket looks good to stay till the distance and it was a good decision by Dravid and they have that extra batsman as super sub for the chase. Marvan Atapattu’s body language at the toss was poor to say the least as he looked pensive to begin with and he was stammering a lot and the smooth flow that we associate with Marvan was clearly absent!

 

Sri Lankan Batting

For India, Ajit Agarkar was in great rhythm; his wrist action was looking superb as one could feel the bite in his bowling after a long time. Two great inswingers to the left handed openers Sangakkara and Jayasuriya saw Sri Lanka to a poor start at 36/2 under 6 overs. Agarkar got the ball to swing back late and off the wicket he was too quick for the batsmen to react to the swing, the low bounce also favoured him. The two batsmen were plumb in front of the stumps. There was no Atapattu at No.3 or No.4, he must be hiding somewhere in the dressing room. Upul Tharanga looked confident to begin with as he played some cracking shots but he was soon removed by Sree Santh who surprised him with a quick short one. Tharanga played the ball straight to Agarkar at fine leg and his wicket finally saw the nervous Atapattu walking in with his side in trouble at 51/3. Tillakaratne Dilshan at the other end thought attack was the best form of defence as he went for his shots and was particularly targeting Sree Santh and Sri Lanka soon found some consolidation from the Dilshan-Atapattu pair.

 

 

The Sri Lankan skipper as he spent time at the wicket started to move his feet well and Dilshan, Atapattu almost put up a century stand for the 4th wicket until Harbhajan got Dilshan’s wicket with a leading edge. Dilshan made a useful 52 which had 9 hits to the fence. Atapattu who was now joined by the struggling Russel Arnold soon reached his half century in 62 balls. Arnold couldn’t get the strike to rotate and the Indians clawed their way back in the game. But the two batsmen started to shift gears and Arnold was now hitting some useful boundaries and Lanka were back on the track. The partnership now reached 83 and Irfan Pathan who was getting the stick bowled a yorker and Arnold who looked to swing it across missed the ball to get out for 32. Wickets then kept falling in a hurry with Ajit Agarkar back for his last spell. First it was Maharoof who got bowled by a full toss, and then it was the big wicket of Atapattu who was superbly caught by Sehwag’s right hand of his own bowling for 87. The rest of the wickets were courtesy of Ajit Agarkar. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 261 with 1 ball remaining in their 50 overs quota. Agarkar had a marvelous day on the field as he finished off with 5/44 in 9.5 overs coupled with 1 catch and 1 run out.

Indian Chase

Chaminda Vaas and Dilhara Fernando did extremely well to give away nothing to the dangerous pair of Sehwag and Tendulkar. The batsmen were forced to take risks after the runs were hard to come by. Tendulkar walked back to the pavilion after he ran down the track to loft Vaas but the former missed the ball and saw his stumps get uprooted. Tendulkar had his second failure in this series as he got out for 11. He did have a six in his short innings when he had got a top edge which flew over thirdman boundary to a pull shot off a quick delivery from Dilhara Fernando. At no.3 came Yuvraj and after hitting a couple of boundaries on the off side, he too was dismissed and this time it was a great catch at point by Dilshan who dived in front to snatch the cut shot from Yuvraj. India were in a spot of bother at 34/2 in a little over 8 overs and Dravid along with Sehwag started to produce the much required partnership. The Indian chase settled down and was never in trouble of the required run rate going up as the batsmen didn’t find the bowlers difficult to score runs. India reached 100 in 18 overs and Sehwag was playing a responsible knock by now. Atapattu finally brought in Muralitharan and he struck immediately with the wicket of Sehwag. Sehwag tried to run Murali’s doosra to third man but he couldn’t get his angle right and was taken nicely by Russel Arnold at first slip. Sehwag fell two runs short of a half century.

 

Young Venugopal Rao joined Dravid and he never looked shaky at all as he went on with his job cleverly. He picked the variations from Muralitharan beautifully and the pair rotated the strike very well to put India in a good position to seal the series 4-0. Dravid was getting the boundaries and so was Venugopal Rao, who was going hard at anything that was short and wide. He even went onto hit an amazing flat six over point off Maharoof. India at 176/4 in over 30 overs was doing extremely well and Sri Lanka depended a lot on Murali to bring them back in the game. And the off spinner did just that as he got Venugopal Rao to edge his doosra to Sangakkara, Venu by then had made a polished 38 in just 41 balls. Just three overs later, Dravid mistimed a hook shot off Fernando to get out and Sri Lanka were back in the game with the home side at 180/5 in 33 overs. Pathan who joined Dhoni got out to Murali’s off spin and India at this stage stared at defeat at 180/6. 82 runs were now required in 93 balls and India had just 4 wickets left, the super sub Suresh Raina now walked into the middle. The two youngsters Dhoni and Raina sprinted and took the 1s and the 2s and they slowly but steadily got the target smaller. A few thumping shots at this stage meant that India were at striking distance from winning this game as the two batsmen went over 50 runs in their partnership with ease. The two batsmen are naturally explosive hitters but they showed superb maturity and Dhoni finished off the game in an emphatic style as he blasted Russel Arnold out of the park for two sixes. Dhoni remained unbeaten on 45 and Raina was 39*, his highest score in his career.

India with this 4 wicket win with 26 balls to spare wrapped up the 7 ODIs Series 4-0 leaving no room for Sri Lanka to come back in the series. Ajit Agarkar for his splendid performance both in bowling and fielding walked away with the Man of the Match award. With runs under his belt, Marvan Atapattu didn’t stammer when he walked in for the post match interview. Sri Lanka now only has pride at stake and the two teams clash at Ahmedabad in a day night affair on Sunday. The Indian team might give the boys on the bench some opportunities in the middle and Sachin Tendulkar could be taking rest on that day.