Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Why Sri Lanka lost the India series

Sri Lanka lost another home series , although we did have some oppurtunities and failed to capitalize on them it's fair to say that India played far more superiour cricket than us. Lots of reasons contributed to the loss but one of the main reasons was the state of the pitches. And although playing at home Sri Lankans hardly had that advantage because flat batting friendly wickets were provided , and the Indian batsmen made full use of it.
Sri Lanka's home superiority was built on slow low turners. We always had Murali and players like Dharmasena , Chandana and now Mendis to support him. Then there was the part timers like Aravinda , Jaysuriya ,Dilshan and Mubarak who took care of another few overs. When Sri Lanka won the world cup in 1996 out of the 50 overs 37 were bowled by Spinners. It was a similar story in home games as well. Sri Lankans were famous for the choke , tight overs bowled quickly by spinners speeds up the game without the opposition realizing it.
Sadly in the last few series we never had that advantage. In the England series there were seaming conditions and it was pretty much the same when the Indians came last time. This time flat pithches were produced where Murali and Mendis were used more as controlling options. Despite having best two spinners in the game we were producing flat pitches making the Indians jobs that much more easy. We could never match the Indians with there batting fire power , but we could easily match them in the spin department and by producing flat belters we handed the series to the Indians.

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