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I might be wrong but it seems as if the Indian Cricket team always starts a new series (home or abroad) very poorly and then tries to catch and make amends. Barring a much superlative batting effort or even more importantly, some washed-out day (s), India would lose the first test against Sri Lanka. If you look at India’s 2007-2008 away Test series against England & Australia and home series against South Africa, you can see that the Indian team started badly and did better as these series progressed.

In the England Series, but for the bad weather and some rear-guard action by Dhoni, India would have lost their first test at Lords. They managed to win the series 1-0 in the end. Even in Australia they lost the first Test at MCG, could have pulled off a win or at least a draw at SCG and ended up beating the Aussies at Perth. Even against SA at home after a drawn first test, India lost the second test and pulled off a win in the third to level the series.

Why is that the case? Does the team has a lot of inertia or need a lot of time to acclimatize? In any case it needs to pull-up its socks and demonstrate some guts and fighting spirit if it wants to survive this very precarious situation in the first test against SL.

The last time India went to Sri Lanka, it pulled off a remarkable win against all odds, thanks to the efforts of Rahul Dravid ( as usual) and Sourav Ganguly in Kandy. Remember India went to Srilanka after the monumental 2001 series against Australia. Moreover both VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar were not touring because of injuries. It was in this background that they pulled out a fascinating win. Rahul scored a 70 odd , while Ganguly narrowly missed his century, remaining not out in his 90s, against a rampaging Murali on a wearing fifth day wicket. Can we expect the same kind of heroics from the duo this time around? Let us wait and watch. The key to tackling both Murali and Mendis, though lies with Laxman. He is the one who will be the most comfortable against these two ( the others are too, but unfortunately cannot dominate them) , since he would be mostly playing them of the front foot because of his height advantage. The others will be relying on reading these two from the pitch and would be literally always on the back foot. India’s success or failure in this series therefore depends a lot on the Hyderabadi stylist.

I was reading Aamir khan’s blog the other day and he has a post on the IPL final. Sachin Tendulkar was sitting right next to him and this is what Aamir wrote about him -

“The match last night was certainly exciting but what made it a unique experience for me was that I had Sachin next to me. You will find this hard to believe but Sachin was able to predict every ball before it was bowled. “He is going to bowl a bouncer next”, “This one is going to be a slower one”, “Full tilt outside the off stump”, “Next one will be a yorker”, “Short of length”. It was uncanny. HE GOT IT RIGHT EACH TIME!!! No wonder its so difficult to bowl to him. He has an amazing instinct. And he told me his logic for each prediction which I wont share with you as I don’t want to reveal how his mind works. But all of us were dumbfounded with his instinct and his acumen.”

Another addition to the long list of praises sung in the honor of Sachin Tendulkar !

You can find the entire post here -

Aamir Khan’s Blog