After displaying stunning performances in test matches with Sri Lanka, it seems that the change of format made a diminishing effect on the Men in Blue. The Team India lost their first Twenty20 match against the touring Lankans by 29 runs. Buttered-fingered India performed poorly with sloppy fielding and dropped few too many important catches to render Sri Lanka a comfortable win.
The 126th Twenty20 match on Indian pitch started with India winning the toss but opting to field first. Sri Lanka went into the field with openers Tillakaratne Dilshan and Sanath Jayasuriya contributing 60 runs of the partnership. Sri Lanka was able to post a massive score of 215, all thanks to the dazzling performance of skipper Kumar Sangakkara 37 runs from 78 balls. Apart from them, Chamara Kapugedera also contributed to the assault and added 47 runs to the board.
The Indian players had to deal with too many dropped catches and misfields. They also missed a few chances of run-outs to allow the opponents to pile up a huge target. The VCA Stadium at Jamtha is known for its good batting pitch and the islanders took full benefit of it. With a required run-rate of 10.80, the hosts initiated the second innings. The openers provided a power-packed start with Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag piling up 55 and 26 respectively. But unfortunately for the team, key players like captain MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma, all failed to even enter double figures.
| Gambhir knocked up a terrific half-century from 19 balls but soon left the pitch after failing to stand against Angelo Mathews’s delivery that went straight to the stumps. His action-packed performance included as many as eleven boundaries. The ill-timed dismissal of MS Dhoni | Dhoni at 9, Sharma at 3 and Yuvraj at 6 left a shocking impact on the team. Yousuf Pathan also was unable to score and left with a duck. In the first innings, pacer Ashish Nehra along with Yusuf Pathan and Pragyan Ojha delivered pretty expensive overs. Nehra> gave the worst-ever performance by any Indian bowler at a T20 match conceding 52 runs from 4 overs. Pathan also gave 54 runs from 4 overs including 20 runs off his last over. |
Sangakara scored his T20 career highest best of 78 overcoming his previous best of 69 against New Zealand. His innings are also the highest-scored ones by any batsmen against India, followed by Ricky Ponting’s> 76 in October, 2007 at Mumbai.
Later, skipper Sangakkara was found quoting to the media that the change of format and introduction of new players helped bring a refreshing amendment to the play for his team. “It was a new format and there were fresh faces who are one-day specialists in the team and were ready to stand up and be counted,” said the proud captain. The Indian captain expressed regret right after the match, “Unfortunately we are not being able to get into the groove when we play Twenty20 Internationals before one-day series. We made the mistake of taking them (T20 matches) as warm-up games before the one day matches.” “We are not one of the best fielding sides in the world but we are also not known to drop too many catches. Of course, the dropped catches had hurt us in the match,” he also added.