Wide ways of Sri Lanka bowlers did India in
The groundsmen had just taken the covers off the pitch. India coach
Duncan Fletcher was having a long hard look at the wicket, but Lasith
Malinga was busy with his routine. As skipper of the Sri Lanka team for
the World T20 final, he did not even bother to look at the wicket. He
was counting his steps for his bowling run-up and marked the end with
his boot.
A groundsman walked alongside with a bucket of lime to mark the spot.
Malinga took the bucket from him, took the brush out and marked three
different spots, one where he usually begins his run-up and the other
two in straight lines with the white marks for the umpires to call a
wide.
While the Sri Lanka players were celebrating their triumph late on
Sunday night, manager Michael de Zoysa explained those lines were to
help him go a little wide of the stumps and bowl just out of the
batsmen's reach.
The Australians had perfected the art of bowling fast and wide of the
off-stump so that it is difficult for batsmen to reach out to the
delivery. Over the years during the IPL, Brett Lee has shown his
perfection with that line for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Malinga took it
a step further.
On Sunday, during the death overs, he bowled his favourite yorker
length deliveries wide of off stump. There was no intention of taking a
wicket, just frustrating the batsmen and choking the scoring rate. James
Faulkner is also capable of doing that, but his ploy did not quite work
against Darren Sammy, mainly because of the long reach of the West
Indies skipper, who hit him for consecutive sixes while exposing all
three stumps.
In the last four overs on Sunday, India scored just 19 and that is
where Mahendra Singh Dhoni's boys lost the plot.
"The last four overs is where we want to score as many runs as
possible and that was an area where we couldn't capitalise on. At the
same time you have to give credit to the Sri Lanka bowlers. I think they
executed their plans brilliantly. They were looking for wide yorkers and
all the balls were perfectly bowled. I think they bowled only one wide
ball or something," said Dhoni, trying to defend India's poor batting
performance.
Other than the in-form Virat Kohli, no other India batsman even
looked like taking the attack to the Sri Lanka bowlers.
"Sri Lanka's strategy wasn't a surprise because they always try to do
this. It's just that their execution was really good. You could see what
was happening.
It's something they keep on doing. You may be noticing it now because
it's the World Cup final. Otherwise they are a side which keeps doing
all these stuff, they are fantastic, they keep changing their plans when
needed," said the India skipper after the loss.
- Hindustan Times |