India in with a chance as Jadeja spell pegs back Sri Lanka
PORT-OF-SPAIN: India’s seriousness about winning the triseries final became evident when a few changes were announced just before the toss on Thursday.
Umesh Yadav’s inconsistency prompted MS Dhoni to opt for R Vinay Kumar, who hadn’t been tried out for a while, and who else but Murali Vijay if Dhoni wanted to lead India in the final?
Dhoni’s rustiness after not keeping wickets for a while showed when he missed the line of the ball at least thrice to gift easy runs to Sri Lanka.
Fielding at first slip, even R Ashwin was too slow to stoop down to take a low catch off an edge from Lahiru Thirimanne off Ishant Sharma in the 18th over. Thirimanne was on two then and Sri Lanka were 55/2. CONTROLLING THE PLAY But India were careful not to let Sri Lanka off the hook. The hallmark of this team has been the ability to come back at opponents. If Ashwin made up for the dropped chance by bowling a stifling line, Dhoni showed amazing reflexes to effect a clever stumping of Rangana Herath.
Ishant too finally claimed Thirimanne’s wicket but not before Kumar Sangakkara and Thirimanne had put together 122 runs for the third wicket.
It put Sri Lanka back on track after they lost two early wickets, one of them being the in-form Mahela Jayawardene, who played his 400th ODI.
Sangakkara, who got a dubious decision in the previous match on Tuesday, dug in. PART-TIMERS Dhoni perhaps made scoring a bit easier during the middle overs when he gave the ball to part-timers Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina.
With plenty of gaps in the field, both Thirimanne and Sangakkara took easy singles while the latter looked to take the attack to India with some aggressive hitting.
Just when it looked Sri Lanka were set to get a big total, Thirimanne fell.
In a rush of blood, Sangakkara too tried to lift Ashwin over midon but Vinay took a good high catch running back.
It triggered a collapse as Ravindra Jadeja took four wickets to polish off the rest of the batting and hand India a big advantage going into the second innings.