Sri Lanka beat India easily. Will India come back again in the second game? Dileep Premachandran says Mendis is the culprit:
Eight of the Indians reached double figures, but came no nearer to
finding a solution to the Mendis conundrum that has ruined their tour
of the teardrop-shaped isle. Mendis, who took out Dravid and Laxman for
fun during the Test series, accounted for Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni as
India's youth proved as clueless as the experienced hands had against
Sri Lanka's spin duo.
Soulberry is less than impressed by the Indian batsmen's inability to watch the ball:
What can it be about Mendis that foxes Indian players? Are they
watching the hand? Are they watching the ball's rotation of seam and
flight to judge the final result? Are they aware of the pace of the
ball as a matter of sixth sense? Why can't they come forward and play?
Why can't they use their feet and play? If they watch the ball closely
and use their feet, don't tell me there is a spinner (and this one
isn't a big one...he relies on deception...fooling players with a large
variety of balls with subtle varations) who cannot be dealt with 7 out
of 10 times!
I know the above para opens me to mockery...here
are cricket gurus with lakhs of runs and hundreds of collective
man-years playing and failing, and here I am, an arm-chair pundit
talking this and that. I acknowledge that I am open to mockery, but
only a fool ignores suggestions when he has no answers. The least
anyone can do is look at the options and suggestions and reject those
which do not work.
Martyd succumbs to the Mendis "hype" with a great work on Mendis in action. But more of a problem for India is that Muralitharan has started taking wickets again (just tailenders this time) and that Vaas and Kulasekara bowled well at the beginning. Will it all look different again, when Sehwag comes back?
Meanwhile a couple of tennis ball cricket authorities in India are fighting for recognition of tennis ball cricket as an official sport. Has no judge seen Chennai 28 yet?! And The Atheist gives us a lovely fan's eye view of the Friends Provident Final.