Kohli & Co will have to fight imaginary challenges if Lankans don’t up the ante

Over 28, delivery No. 4. Lasith Malinga, the once-exclusive dealer in yorker, fires his most trusted weapon at Virat Kohli. The Indian skipper digs it out with consummate ease and implicit confidence, sucks life out of the ball with his bat like a cat would with its paws out of a mouse, gathers the lifeless leather and toss it back to the bowler.

A smile breaks out on Malinga’s face, the smile of the vanquished, and Kohli responds with a smile, the smile of the benign conqueror.

A screenshot of the scoreboard of the Sunday’s one-day match would sum up the story of ruthless Indian domination but if I were to pick an image to punctuate the proceedings I would happily toss out the mass and muscle in Shikhar Dhawan’s lusty hits which stood at an impressive 23 (20 fours and three sixes) for the craft, grace and surrender lurked in the seemingly simple 28th over drama involving a legend who has grown old and fading out and a legend standing up and delivering.

India’s nine-wicket win that came inside 29 overs, with more than 21 overs to spare, was illustrated by another picture, this time post match. While trying to explain Sri Lanka’s collapse from 139 for one in the 25th over to 216 all out, captain Upul Tharanga fumbled for words to recollect and recount the disaster and make sense out of it: what you got to watch was a series of shrugs, one beginning before the other ending.

Sri Lanka’s interim coach Nick Pothas was upbeat about the gifted guys at his command and was positive about delivering quick results.

But the cooks in the system who, in his words, are “too many” at the moment should let him and the support staff give the boys “a little bit of time, a little bit of love, a little bit of care” to build up that confidence.

Is the road to recovery for the hosts so simple?

One would like to believe so for the simple reason that it’s just the beginning of the limited-overs series and that there are five more to follow.

That’s ample time to watch how Kedar Jadhav and KL Rahul are going to keep their middle-order berths in a three-way battle with Manish Pandey and what MS Dhoni is really up to: a descent farewell in the forthcoming home series against Australia or an infamous exit with below-par performances? The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman