A day prior to India’s match against Sri Lanka, Jasprit Bumrah and Umesh Yadav were seen landing yorkers at will. Later, Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled a handful of deliveries around the fourth and fifth stump channel around the off-stump. Coach Anil Kumble and batting coach Sanjay Bangar, who both have worked closely with the pacers, were nodding in approval. Everything seemed to be going their way and the plan was to keep it as simple as possible. Bhuvneshwar was the only one seen experimenting, by delivering a few knuckle balls, made famous by Zaheer Khan in the 2011 World Cup.
Bowling was least of their concern as with four pacers, a seam-bowling all-rounder and two spinners in the squad, India had all bases covered. But on Thursday, everything changed. With no swing or lateral movement available, the pacers struggled on a placid Oval surface as Kusal Mendis and Gunathilaka caught them by surprise. With no Plan B, captain Virat Kohli’s only other option was Ravindra Jadeja.
But with a strong wind blowing across and a short boundary on one side, the left-right combination of Mendis and Gunathilaka had an advantage. May be, India missed Ravichandran Ashwin, who holds a mental edge over most Sri Lanka batsmen. Former captain Kumar Sangakkara said it was a big mistake to replace him with Pandya. India, now have to go back to the drawing board, reassess the combination they would use against South Africa.
With Jadeja being expensive on the day, Kohli had to bring himself on and even saw Kedar Jadhav’s off-spin being ineffective. Despite getting the breakthroughs of Gunathilaka and Mendis, India couldn’t stop the run flow, as Angelo Mathews along with Kusal Perera took the momentum forward. Kohli, though, defended bowlers and instead credited Sri Lanka for outplaying them.
“You always see the hindsight when you lose games. You trust your bowlers to control runs and you know, have to bowl good lengths and have your covers when they get out. We wanted to do that in this game. Sometimes it comes off. Sometimes it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean you don’t think what if we had done something different? You back a side, and you go with it and expect them to execute those things.
As batsmen, we can’t score every time. As bowlers, you can’t bowl consistent line and length in every game. So some guys will have off days. On outfields and pitches like these, you will have sides who will bat well. In one-day cricket, no one is guaranteed a win, and you can play with five spinners, or you can play with five fast bowlers. You have to bowl well in any case. That’s how I see it,” he said.
The one other topic to ponder will be the manner in which Indian batsmen went about their business. Though they posted a 300-plus total, they blew up a wonderful opportunity to score at least 20 more considering India scored only 80 runs in 15 overs between 25-40 losing two wickets. Kohli said that his team doesn’t play explosive brand of cricket right through the 50 overs and rather focuses on consolidating at the top before going all out with wickets in hand. But on surfaces like this, India needs to look a lot more than the par score.
“From the batting point of view, as I said, I thought we paced it well. I thought we had enough on the board. In hindsight, when you look back, maybe you think of phases where we could have accelerated, but I don’t see that as a major issue. Maybe we will have to push harder now in the next few games to give us a 20-run cushion. Maybe after seeing a result like this, because we’re playing on the same ground as well,” he added.
venkatakrishna@newindianexpress.com