Learnings from the recently concluded India-Sri Lanka series

So while the whole world, including yours truly, was busy watching the Olympics, the Indian cricket team came out of  hibernation by playing against their familiar opponents, Sri Lanka. Here are a few thoughts on the series that went by:

The India-Sri Lanka series reminds you of your boyhood days. Every evening you went out into the ground with the same bunch of kids and played cricket. And returned the next day to play some more. Thanks to the mandarins at BCCI & Cricket Sri Lanka for making us relive those old days.

This was “supposed” to be a Test series. Then why was it converted into an ODI series with one meaningless T20 thrown in? Just maybe, Tony Grieg was right

Irfan Pathan: Still dividing opinions amongst Indian fans

If the idea is to prepare for the T20 world cup coming up in Sri Lanka, then why play just 1 T20 and not more, instead of the ODIs?

Did we learn anything new from this series? From an India perspective – nothing. Except that Rohit Sharma has some very powerful backing in the squad. Performances & recent form certainly don’t justify his continued place in the squad.

The others were as usual – Virat Kohli continues his astounding run, Gautam Gambhir continues to give the occasional good century, Suresh Raina is a very good batsman on subcontinental pitches, Manoj Tiwary still does not get a chance and performs on occasion. And the bowling lineup continues to be dodgy.

Irfan Pathan – the mystery continues. He has become a bits-and-pieces player rather than a specialist bowler. The bowling towards the end of the series was good. But the questions still remain. He is a more than capable 5th bowler, but a place amongst the 4 lead bowlers remains a question mark.

India for some odd reason doesn’t know how to handle left-arm spinners. Pragyan Ojha’s entries and exits continue to confound.

Lasith Malinga over 10 overs is much easier to handle than over 4 overs.

And the last query – Is Sehwag interested in playing any more? Maybe he was bored of another Sri Lanka series, but how long do we go with his maverick nature?

Just hate it when product placements are done during commentary. Where is the “spirit of cricket” business here?

So that’s it. One more meaningless series over and we learn nothing new.

P.S: Looking forward to the Test series against the Kiwis. After all someone has to come up to replace Rahul Dravid. Who will raise his hand to do that?