Javagal Srinath
When a bunch of talented young men get together and play as a team, concentrating on the achievements of the whole rather than the parts, the good results are never far away. And if there is one thing Mahendra Singh Dhoni specializes in, it is in getting his boys to play as a cohesive unit. I would go so far as to say that Dhoni is the best Indian captain over the past 2-3 decades.
The calm that he brings to proceedings, irrespective of the tense situations, the ease with which he handles extreme pressure, be it while batting or leading the side, marks Dhoni out as someone special. That he leads by example makes it that much easier to demand big things of his mates.
However, a captain is always only as good as his team and a lot depends on how the team responds to their leader's call. Here the Indian team excelled, more so the bowlers. The batsmen may have slipped up in the last ten overs, losing wickets in a heap, and that, ordinarily, may have hit the confidence of the bowlers who would have been preparing for a score of at least 280. To their credit, the bowlers, led admirably by Zaheer Khan once again, didn't let that affect them.
One must remember that in Lanka, bowling is never easy. The conditions are sapping, the humidity killing. No wonder even the extremely fit Dhoni too struggled. Performing in such conditions, match after match at that, takes some doing and I take my hat off to Zaheer for his excellent showing. Ever since he's been back from the injury lay-off, he's got better and better. It must have helped that he took his time coming back and didn't rush things out of desperation.
It was not a huge score that they were defending but it didn't reflect that way as the bowlers came out charging. One cannot always expect tall scores to be put up – at any rate this series hasn't seen too many runs being scored – and any score needs to be defended. With that in mind, the bowlers came to the party.
I particularly liked the way Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel supported Zaheer right through the series and with Harbhajan back to his wicket-taking ways, the Sri Lankans didn't have any respite. That actually was the key to the series triumph, the regular taking of wickets, be it by the fast men or the spinners. There simply was no easy was out for the Lankan batsmen.
It was also good to see a couple of young Indian batsmen come good. Scoring runs in a dead rubber is one thing and doing so when the series is very much in the balance, as it was on Wednesday, is another. The contributions of Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina must be seen in that light and not just by the weight of runs they made. Also anyone can plonk his foot and hammer the ball on flat tracks but contributing on pitches where there is something for the bowlers, calls for a fair amount of ability.
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