This of course has hardly got something to do with today's cricket. Nor is the match under consideration a recent one. But, a scroll through the earlier matches on cricinfo (after watching the highlightes on TV) provoked me to write a word or two about this match. That was the super six encounter between India and Sri Lanka in the 2003 world cup which India won one-sided. The match extend India's advent in that world cup to the semi finals. After going through the post, one can guess as to what sort of foul play might have been involved in the match.
The match started with Sri Lanka winning the toss and electing to field first that assures that the pitch was a batsmen friendly one and chasing any decent total would not be a problem. Following this, India put up a decent total of 292 on the board with as usual Sachin Tendulkar scoring 97 runs. For the first time in the tournament, India put up a 100+ run partnership with both Sehwag and Tendulkar scoring half centuries. Then comes the Sri Lankan innings where batting was thought of to be an easy job and Sri Lankans were found doing the same in a reckless manner.
5 out of the 11 Sri Lankan players who took to the crease scored ducks, with the highest individual score coming from the bat of Kumara Sangakkara who scored 30 runs from 33 deliveries. Out of the 5 who scored ducks, 4 of them were top batsmen. Videos suggest that each and every catch taken by the Indian fieldsman were similar to the ones that happen during catch practices. Added to this was the fact that Sri Lanka had to win atleast two out of the 3 super six matches and Sri Lanka had already lost their opening match to the Aussies by 96 runs. Sri Lanka should have taken this match against India seriously which never looked to be the case.
The entire Sri Lankan innings gets over by the end of the 23rd over meaning, the innings lasted for less than half of the total number of overs scheduled. The Sri Lankan run rate at the end of the innings is 4.73 which showed that they had no problems batting. The match was no day-night encounter to worry about the due factor that happened throughout the world cup. Javagal Srinath is awarded the man of the match with Sachin Tendulkar being one of the contenders for the same after scoring 97 as mentioned earlier. This suggests that bowling the opposition was a tougher task than scoring runs.
The weakest team viz Namibia has a worst defeat of 182 runs and Sri Lanka come out worse than that. Namibia bats for 42.3 overs as compared to 23 overs played by Sri Lanka. The Indian captain Sourav Ganguly never tosses the ball to spinners. Only three bowlers fro the Indian side were enough to over throw the Lankan batsmen. I wish the readers of this post tell me as what decision one has to come regarding such a match!
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