Skip to main content

India - Sri Lanka : What went wrong?

By
Sri Lanka defeated India comprehensively in the first T20 encounter in Colombo on Tuesday. Kusal Perera’s quick-fire 50 took the team to a smooth win. Y Chahal’s two wickets did help temporarily halt the progress but wasn’t enough.


Sri Lanka won the toss and decided to bowl first. India walked in and lost two early wickets. Rohit Sharma went out for a duck. Suresh Raina out for one. Shikhar Dhawan played a valiant knock of 90 but unfortunately was not a match-winning innings. The fairly competitive total of 174 was not a problem at all for Sri Lanka. Nuwan Pradeep took two wickets.  Chameera, Dananjaya, and Mendis took one each. Despite the regular falling of the wickets, Sri Lanka was well on the path to victory. Washington Sundar and Y Chahal took two wickets each. With a 2nd wkt Partnership: 53 off 19 balls between D Gunathilaka (14) and K Perera (37), there was no stopping the Lions this time.

It was a wonderful all-round performance by the home team. Lions do not forget in this scenario, evidently. They played hard and strong, and reached the target smoothly with nine deliveries to spare. Kusal Perera was adjudged the man of the match for his brilliant innings. He gave the team exactly what it needed for this must-win match.

Where did India go wrong?
Rohit Sharma needs to lead by example. He has to get over his lack of runs. It is time he moves on. With all the ridiculous memes about him breaking the internet, being called No-Hit to the Rahul Gandhi of cricket, Rohit Sharma needs to step up and start hitting again.

Rohit added that while the total was not terrible (not that he had anything to do with it), the start that Sri Lanka got was enough to keep them going. 75 runs from the first 6 overs. Yes, we saw that.
He has promised to come back stronger.
Yes, we are hoping too.
Indian bowling came up a cropper. That is also true. The economy rate has to be kept an eye on. Despite taking two wickets, Chahal was expensive. 27 runs from one over of Shardul Thakur. What is up with that?

India faces Bangladesh tomorrow. Let’s hope the boys get it together by then. All of them.

Indu



Reactions:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tennis - a new season with exciting prospects

By
This article is written by Rajnikanth - a sports fan and a tennis fanatic.  He is on a personal mission to watch ATP events in every place possible :-) and is hoping that his god 'Roger Federer' wins a few more tournaments in 2014.  Rajni is a banker and is based in the middle east.  You can reach Rajni on his email - rajnikanth_r@yahoo.com


The new year was rung in with greetings from players across the world, followed by some key announcements. The new season is already a fortnight old and there have been plenty of excitement and several developments - on the Tennis court and off it!
Rafael Nadal continued his good run since his comeback in Feb 2013 but also suffered a rare loss at the hands of his compatriot, Davis Cup team mate and good friend David Ferrer in the exhibition tournament at Abu Dhabi and finished third. However, the following week, he won the Qatar Open, earning 500 ATP points and extending his lead over Novak Djokovic who continues to hold the second spot in th…
1 comment
Read more

Fan Data Analytics: Key to drive sports company growth

By
Over the last several years, the buzz word in business and IT circles has been "big-data" and analytics. Many many articles and write-ups talk about them so I won't go into the details. You could get enough to last a lifetime with just the first few results of a Google search of these terms. But do you really know how it applies, specifically to a sports company?

For long, sports franchises have been one of the biggest users of analytics. Before this was a buzz word, coaches and managers have relied up numbers and finding patterns in them to drive on-field performance. Indeed, the major leagues of the world have relied on performance analytics for everything from scouting for talent to calling the action on the field of play.

But that never transcended to the off-field, more mundane but equally important task of managing the sports business. As more and more options come up vying for the fan's attention - live events, travel, other sports, TV, the Internet - the war…
3 comments
Read more