I have to really appreciate the lankans for thier fighting spirit. Consider the state that they were in 6/3 in 4 overs, if our team was in this position. We would have had Dravid/Tendulkar with Yuvraj on the crease. The Indian team would have certainly done one of the following a. conitnue to lose wickets b. Completely shut down and score at a measly 2 rpo to be something like 30/3 in 15 overs.
In both situations if the tail wags a little it would have ended up with a score of 160-180. But look at the scores the lankans managed 230. They were able to confidently increase the scoring rate from under 2 rpo to 4.6. I cant imagine something like this from India. They had done this only on one occasion that I can remember of , the one day series against Pakistan where both Yuvraj, Dravid were in great form and the rear was superbly guided by Dhoni. SO they key to Indias success now squarely lies on Yuvraj and Dravid. One thing that seems to be coming out after seeing the other teams is that they have key guys with specific work. Dilshan, Attapattu and Arnold are entrusted with the gritty work in the middle overs scoring singles and twos. They way they ran their singles and picked the gaps today are wonderful assessment of how they have understood their job. India never had such players in the middle overs. The last batsman who could pick gaps and milk singles was Azhar. Dravid was doing that well in the Pakistan series along with Yuvraj but now both are woefully out of form. This gets me to think why cant the Indian team practice with say 14 fielders in a match like situation to get the players to find gaps and improve thier judgement of singles. It shouldnt be too difficult to do that. This is some out of the box thinking that we need
