Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth and Anil Kumble will miss the third one-dayer against Sri Lanka to be played in Margao tomorrow
The Preview by Sidharth Monga in Margoa13-Feb-2007
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Now that both India and Sri Lanka have announced their 15-member squads for the
World Cup, the third one-dayer at Goa on Wednesday will provide a sneak preview about their respective strategies.India, as they have been doing over the last six games – four against West Indies and two against Sri Lanka – will continue to ask questions of themselves. Sri Lanka,
wearing a more settled look and with a lead in the series, will have
more on the agenda – to seal the series and avenge the 6-1 drubbing
when they last toured India. Quite against the run of form, they
had lost out in the first round of the Champions Trophy too. For India
this match is another part of a protracted finetuning, for Sri Lanka
another step in a confidence-building exercise, while the 27,000 or so
Goans, who will be packing the stadium to the rafters, would surely want to witness another humdinger of a contest.India go in with a few changes from the previous game. Irfan Pathan is still not 100 per cent fit and will miss out, while Sreesanth will be rested. Anil Kumble will miss the match due to
personal reasons. Zaheer Khan and Ajit Agarkar are set to make
a comeback, while Dinesh Karthik is most likely to make way for Yuvraj
Singh. Sourav Ganguly batted with a bandage on his left thumb – he had injured his thumb
at Rajkot – and looked in a bit of discomfort early on. But after a few knocks, he
looked okay, as Dravid later confirmed. Suresh Raina and RP Singh, stand-in for the unfit players, were expected to join the team later in the day and not play tomorrow.Yuvraj’s fitness and form will be closely watched as he will be the most crucial batsman in
the Indian middle-order for the World Cup. Last April, at the same venue, he had looked unstoppable. Probably at the brightest of his purple patch then, he had decimated
England with a 76-ball 103. He is yet to get a century since and will
look for a happy return to form. After a cruciate ligament tear during
the Champions Trophy forced him out of international action, he has
played only two one-dayers, against West Indies in the
recently-concluded series. In those two matches, he did not show any
palpable signs of his earlier form, and was forced out of the next two
games against Sri Lanka because of back spasms. At the nets today Yuvraj batted, bowled, and fielded with a knee cap on. “In the last couple of games he had back spasms. He’s fielded and batted. We feel he is fit enough to be considered in the 12. So we picked him,” said Rahul Dravid at the pre-match press conference.The other closely-watched Indian player will be Sehwag.
Sometime ago his opening slot was set in stone; now recalled, the team
is not sure where to use him. He batted in the middle-order in the
last game and scored 19 off 23 before featuring in a soft late-cut
dismissal. Dravid said they had not
ruled out the option of Sehwag opening the innings tomorrow. “”We are
all hoping he comes good. I think he’s an innings away from coming
good. If it happens tomorrow, great, if he doesn’t we’ll just have to
wait a little longer.”Sri Lanka have not chosen their twelve so
far and will take one final look at the pitch tomorrow morning before
doing so. Missing from the nets was Kumar Sangakkara who had come down
with an upset stomach. Sangakkara had scored a century at Rajkot and
won the man-of-the-match award. But Mahela Jayawardene, the Sri Lankan
captain, didn’t sound worried. “It is nothing serious as such, he had
a stomach upset in the morning. We felt that he doesn’t need to come
to the practice. He should be okay tomorrow,” Jayawardene said.
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Sri Lanka have not chosen their twelve so |
With a series to be won, the Sri Lankans are not expected to
experiment too much – two of their 15-man squad on this tour are not
going to the World Cup and hence may not feature in this match. “Every
game is a motivation for us. Winning is a good habit to have. We want
to win every game and that has been the attitude for the last 12
months. The team that wants to beat us have to play really well.
Winning the series would be a great achievement,” Jayawardene said.After losing the last match at Rajkot, Dravid, mindful that he was not leading the youngest team around, had conceded that a superior fielding effort from Sri Lanka had made the difference in the end. Fielding was indeed the focus for the first forty minutes at the nets
today. After the team had a meeting for around 45 minutes, with
all the members sitting on the ground in a circle, they got into
fielding and running-between-the-wickets practice before they went for
the nets. Greg Chappell, the coach, chucked balls at Ian Frazer, the
team biomechanist, while the fielders ran in to field and throw and
two batsmen were made to run between the wickets at the same time. Sri
Lanka followed a more orthodox routine at the nets, an indicator of lesser concerns in fielding.The pitch at the Nehru Stadium in Fatorda looks a batting beauty, a
good flat one-day track as the euphemism would have it. Both the
captains were of the opinion that the pitch should produce a big
score while Dravid thought it would help spinners in the latter part
of the day. Suryakant Naik, the curator, said the wicket would play
evenly through the day, predicting 280 to 300 should be a good score.
The weather in Goa promises to be rain-free, with temperatures
expected to range between 26 and 31 degree Celsius. Humidity of 59 per
cent is expected. India have played four matches at the Nehru Stadium
and have lost three – two of them to Sri Lanka, who have played only
one other game here, losing to Australia in 1989-90.Squads:India (from): 1 Rahul Dravid (capt), 2 Sourav Ganguly, 3 Robin
Uthappa, 4 Sachin Tendulkar, 5 Virender Sehwag, 6 Yuvraj Singh, 7
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), 8 Ajit Agarkar, 9 Harbhajan Singh, 10 Munaf
Patel, 11 Zaheer Khan, 12 Dinesh Karthik.Sri Lanka (from): 1 Mahela Jayawardene (capt), 2 Sanath Jayasuriya, 3
Upul Tharanga, 4 Kumar Sangakkara (wk), 5 Marvan Atapattu, 6
Tillakaratne Dilshan, 7 Chamara Silva, 8 Russel Arnold, 9 Upul
Chandana, 10 Farveez Maharoof, 11 Lasith Malinga, 12 Dilhara Fernando,
13 Malinga Bandara, 14 Nuwan Zoysa, 15 Nuwan Kulasekera.
