Welcome victory for the men in blues.
Sri Lanka have won the toss and elected to bat first. They got off to a worst possible start by losing wicket in the very first ball of the match. Lovely away seam movement from Kumar to take up the top of off stumps. From then on, Sri Lankan batting line up never recovered. Captain Sangakara and former captain Jayawardena fell off quickly so were the other middle order batsmen. Opener Dilshan was threatening to salvage the batting woes but he succumbed when it mattered the most. The tail wagged and helped the host to register some degree of the moderate total of 170 to something to ball at.
When chasing begin, India too lost chips quite early than they would have liked. But they recovered unlike the Sri Lankans. Thanks to the partnership between Opener Sehwag and Raina and later Sehwag and captain Dhoni who put on a match-winning unbroken partnership to seal much-needed triumph for the Indians.
The match was however marred with a controversy when Sehwag on 99* hit a six to off-spinner Randiv at long-off with only one run to win. Sehwag celebrated what he thought was his 13th ODI century only to know that the only no-ball has been counted not the six. Sehwag accused Randiv of deliberately bowling the illegal delivery to avoid him from getting a hundred. Home Captain Sangakara defended Randiv by stating that he was trying to ball a 'doosra' which caused the over-stepping of the crease(no-ball).
Grandmaster' comments:
The tournament is wide open now: three teams have shared equal wins and losses but India and New Zealand have bonus points while Sri Lanka missed their bonus point by five balls when they successfully chased their target against New Zealand. It everything to play for every teams in every match from now onwards in the road to the the Final on 28 August 2010. There is as my friend says "plenty of spice" in store for us in the tournament.