Anoop DubeyPosted By Anoop Dubey,,
July 25,2012
Sri Lanka 139 for 1 (Tharanga 59*, Dilshan 50) beat India 138 (Gambhir 65, Perera 3-19, Mathews 3-14) by nine wickets
For the first three overs on a blustery afternoon in Hambantota, Sri Lanka looked thrown. Running in through strong winds, their opening bowlers found rhythm elusive and lines hard to control. Lasith Malinga got no movement; the debutant Isuru Udana’s first over comprised 11 balls and contained 16 runs; there were careless overthrows and misfields; and India scored 31 for 0 with barely a risk. And then Thisara Perera, in the midst of his best home summer, changed everything and turned Sri Lanka’s quest to draw level in the series into a cruise.
Perera made the ball swing in the air and seam off the surface. He did not bowl grenades, but he did not need to. Against accurate lengths and stingy lines, India’s batsmen weren’t far from playing an impatient shot. Perera took a wicket in each of his first three overs without conceding a run, and he could have had a fourth had Angelo Mathews not dropped MS Dhoni at first slip. His spell of 3-3-0-3 left India on 41 for 4 after eight overs, a slide that did not subside.
As India collapsed like an undercooked cake at one end, Gautam Gambhir held the other up. He’d begun with a crisp square drive and a flick off the pads as early as Malinga’s second over, but his steadiness was swamped by the ineptness of his team-mates. He nearly became the first India player to carry his bat in a one-day international but was the last man out, for 65.
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