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The dance of legbreaks. The top scorers burst. The batter is the centre of conversation. An infraction has occurred. There are wickets to burn and the run rate is good. Even yet, you don’t know if the pursuing side will prevail. This is a genre-defining work for ODI. Pay close attention to this object. This is a low-scoring dogfight.
Squint to see the dust puffs rise to the surface, hear the lbw pleads as they beg, and then hear them crescendo into a long chorus. Observe the best spin bowlers scrounge for the ball and get both edges beaten, while others suppress every physical urge to play the sweep or slog as though decades of batting progress hadn’t taken place. You will find yourself back in the late nineties.
It is not acceptable to take 67 balls to score fifty as an opener in the majority of current matches. It would be more accurate to characterise a 56 off 75 balls (a genuine retro strike rate of 74.66) as an odd innings rather than a strong one.
A mooring? Oh no. What is that? Extract it and discard it into the ocean’s depths, where it belongs.
Reversing pressure is now standard practice. You should never allow bowlers dictate the play. If you really do want to go into accumulation mode, occasionally launch one down the track, slap a reverse-sweep past short third or scoop a seam bowler over your shoulder.
However, this game left it on read and 2024 DMed. Examine that Sri Lankan card below. Tell me you don’t feel like you’ve just walked out of a time machine after reading those strike rates aloud. Scores such as 14 from 31 by Kusal Mendis, 14 from 21 by Charith Asalanka, and 20 off 26 by No. 6 hitter Janith Liyanage are recorded.
Even India’s starting lineup evoked the spirit of their collaboration at the turn of the century. Like the classic straight man to the balls-to-the-wall Sanath Jayasuriya-Virender Sehwag-Adam Gilchrist combo, which Rohit Sharma played so brilliantly on a hard surface, Gill padded his way to 13 from 25 in the opening 10 overs.
In his second over of international cricket, Rohit smashed debutant Mohamed Shiraz for four, four, and six. He then went down the pitch and smoked Asitha Fernando over midwicket second ball. Despite the spinners turning it on, Rohit continued to hit out. These were the gun players, back when powerplays were just called “fielding restrictions”. The batters who, when the ball—there was only one—was still hard, sent the scoreboard roaring out of the starting blocks. who, where others saw peril, saw opportunity.
The fact that this series is even an ODI format instead of the entire tour being six T20 formats suggests that this may have something to do with the fact that the upcoming Champions Trophy is an ODI competition, for which Sri Lanka has not qualified but India has. But how long before that turns into a T20 match?
Maybe the bilateral ODIs are coming to an end, and to be honest, that feels good. However, this game at Khettarama was magnificent in its own right, even though it clashed with the tone of most contemporary limited-overs contests. Throwing relentless spin against a formidable opposition, Sri Lanka played like the Sri Lanka of old, finding ways to climb back into the match. India used more modern techniques, but the pitch was so important that it kept dragging them back to the past.
The last act was flawless. Asalanka, the fourth-best spinner in Sri Lanka, darted a ball into Arshdeep Singh, the eleventh-best batsman in India. Singh produced a hoick across the line that harked back to an era when batting coaches hardly had time for bowlers, and as a result, the tailenders would produce shots that would cause one to think of words like ‘agricultural’ or ‘loutish’.
No one finds it to be flawless. Still, occasionally playing through a classic can be enjoyable.