The Indian tour of Sri Lanka finished yesterday with India winning the only t20 by 30 odd runs. On the whole, it could be called a successful tour for India, winning the ODI series 4-1. This victory will give the us some confidence heading into a long season ahead.
Highlights of the tour were Virat Kohli, Gambhir and Irfan Pathan. Kohli was fantastic in the OOI’s, scoring the 2 hundreds to take his tally to 13 centuries in total. His form and confidence showed in the t20 match were he made the carrier best 68 and bagged the man of the match award along with the man of the series award. His hunger for runs is really inspiring and is developing into a very dependable number 3 batsmen for India. We may not miss Rahul Dravid after all.
Gambhir played well too scoring 1 century and 2 fifties. Raina chipped in with 3 fifties and Dhoni with 2 so on the whole, it was a good batting performance for the team.. except for Rohit Sharma. His highest score in the entire series was 5 runs and he did not bat in the t20. This series was a big disappointment for him and he will now surely be relegated to play in the Ranji’s. Irfan Pathan bowled and batted well in his comeback series and earned himself some playing time which is good for him and Indian bowling line up.
So India is now sitting in second position in ODI rankings, 0.02 points behind Australia. One slip by the Aussies and we will be on top. And then we will have to consolidate our position, the way we did in tests for a couple of years. The test series against New Zealand starts on august 23rd and a 2-0 win in this series will earn us 2 rating points in the rankings taking us nowhere. But it will do our confidence a world of good so I am hoping we win the series 2-0, specially with Vettori not playing because of injury.
A Journal 