More Mendis, no Sehwag

dcsiva — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:40:00 GMT

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.

Cover Points : tennis ball cricket

More Mendis, no Sehwag