leading 2-0 in the five-match series, Men in Blue aim to keep the ruthless streak going vs lanka
Having taken a comfortable 2-0 lead, a confident India will look to seal the five-match series against Sri lanka when they lock horns in the third cricket one-dayer here Sunday.
Virat Kohli and company have not made the fans feel the absence of regular skipper MS Dhoni, who was rested for the first three ODIs, as the Men in Blue have outplayed the Islanders in the first two matches with clinical performances.
If openers Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan made the Sri lankan bowlers look ordinary in Cuttack then the Indian batting line-up, led by Ambati Rayudu, once again showed their might at Motera.
India posted a mammoth 363 to win the opening game by a 169-run margin and then achieved their 275-run target with more than five overs to spare in the next match. All the three centurions — Rahane, Dhawan and Rayudu, have literally toyed with the lankan bowling, who are struggling on batting friendly pitches.
The track at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Uppal also looks no different and a score of 300 plus is once again in the offing, with the stadium having a history of big run chases. The Indian bowling also stood the test against an experienced Sri lankan batting with Ishant Sharma bagging four wickets in the first ODI and spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel making it count in the second.
With young Axar Patel making his presence felt with impressive figures of 2-39 at Sardar Patel Stadium, Kohli is unlikely to tinker with the winning combination and will certainly look to shut the lankans out in the third game itself. The hosts would always be wary of a counter-attack from a dangerous lankan outfit, which has the knack of surprising its opposition time and again.
With their backs to the wall in a must-win game to stay alive in the series, Sri lanka will certainly try and come back with a vengeance to prove a point as worthy replacements after the West Indies pull-out. led by the gutsy Angelo Mathews, Sri lanka showed glimpses of what they can do in Ahmedabad when the visitors gave India a hard time before finally caving in.
The visitors fought back from early blows to put up a respectable score courtesy Mathews' unbeaten 92 and a fighting 61 by old warhorse Kumar Sangakkara.
Sangakkara and Thisara Perera would take this as their home game in regards to their association with Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPl. The skipper though was critical of his batsmen after the team's abject surrender while chasing 364 in the first match. Even in the second game, the batsmen faltered on a good wicket.
The bowling is also a cause for concern for the lankan's with the likes of Dhammika Prasad, Perera and Suraj Randiv failing to live up to expectations. Off-spinner Randiv did pick up three wickets in the first game and leg-spinner Seekkuge Prasanna also helped the team with a triple strike in Ahmedabad but both the spinners conceded too many runs to be effective.
‘Working towards the WC’
Aiming to seal the series, Indian skipper Virat Kohli Saturday said the team is preparing to be ruthless ahead of the 2015 World Cup. “We treat every game like a knockout game, so I am not thinking about 2-0. We are making plans for every game and trying to execute those plans. That's the kind of mindset we want to build going into a tournament like the World Cup, where, come the knockout stage, you play one knockout game and you're out,” said Kohli on the eve of the third one-dayer.
The Men in Blue have literally outplayed the lankans in every department so far, but Kohli is focused at looking within rather than rejoicing in the opposition's failure.
“It doesn't really matter what the other team is feeling like, what their strengths and weaknesses are, as long as we are focused on what we want to do. If we improve our areas of concern, oppositions should not matter, and that's the kind of culture and belief we are trying to build into this team now,” said the top-order batsman.
A confident-looking India are looking to seal the series at Uppal itself and Kohli said the mission has begun for the World Cup. “It's about being ruthless for us, and winning every game. That's the kind of passion all these guys have, it's a matter of bringing it out. We have to keep the team closest to the combination we want to take into the World Cup, and let those guys play their roles better instead of trying to experiment too much at this point of time. It's about finding the perfect combination that we feel 100 per cent sure of going into the World Cup.
“That these are the 11 players who are going to do the job for us. But that will be considered and we will have discussions on that. But what I personally feel is that our focus right now is to get that perfect combination of 11 players right,” he said.
India have witnessed three centuries from Rahane, Dhawan and Rayudu but Kohli believes in ironing out the flaws even after the resounding wins.
"It's more important when you're winning, to underline the things that you can improve on, and the things that didn't go right in that particular game. What we are trying to achieve is being ruthless, rather than letting situations be.
“If you want to be ruthless and you want to have big wins, it's very important to address what happened in a convincing win so you can increase the margin of victory the next time around and improve those small areas as well. That's the kind of hunger and vision that we are trying to bring into the team now going into the World Cup. We want to be ruthless, we want to win by big margins; not let any situation sort of pass by and not be casual in any situation,” said the Delhi star.
Kohli lavished praise on Rayudu for his unbeaten 121. “He was quite brilliant in the No. 3 slot. It's about recognising the batsmen who can bat through and Rayudu is one of those players, who has a different set of skills to bat the full 50 overs and take the team through. I think it was a great show of temperament, character and class that he possesses,” Kohli opined.