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The Cola Kids get fizzical

Arjuna Ranatunga won the toss on a bland batting pitch at the Vidharbha Cricket Association Ground, in Nagpur, and opted to bat second. Interestingly, Mohammad Azharuddin said that he would have inserted Lanka, had he won the toss.

Rather strange, that. And it seems to fly in the face of the ground's history -- I don't remember, off hand, a team winning on the chase here.

Ranatunga's thinking perhaps was that he would rather trust his batting lineup to chase, rather than his bowlers and, more importantly, teflon-fingered fielders, to defend.

With Saurav Ganguly coming off a rest and looking a touch rusty, and Ajay Jadeja looking clueless as always when opening, India got off to a bad start in the initial overs.

Sri Lanka, with some very intelligent field placing by Arjuna Ranatunga and some good line and length work from the two seamers Chaminda Vaas and Pramodaya Wickremasinghe, helped the good work along. India thus crawled to 16/0 in 5 and, thanks largely to some up-tempo work from Ganguly, to 42/1 at the end of ten overs.

The wicket to fall was that of Jadeja, the batsman trying to swat one from Vaas on the rise through cover without moving his feet, only to get the leading edge back to the bowler.

It could well have been 42/2, though -- with runs hard to come by, frustration got to Saurav Ganguly and, off the ball previous to the Jadeja dismissal, he aimed an almighty hoik at Vaas only to have the ball swirling off the outer edge, down to backward point where Hemanta Boteju, making his debut, got both hands to it before grassing it.

That brought Ganguly and Dravid together for a 236-run partnership for the second wicket that saw both batsmen notch up individual hundreds, in contrasting styles.

Dravid, who spent a good part of last year wandering through a mental maze, thanks largely to selectorial wisdom of the time that deemed him a misfit for the one day game, has looked a completely different player since the New Zealand tour. He has also been making a noticeable effort to wipe out the two articles of criticism against his batting in ODIs -- to wit, that he doesn't score singles and rotated strike enough, and that he doesn't innovate on his strokeplay.

Today, he was consistently ahead of his partner on the strike-rate, actually overhauling Ganguly and getting to the century (off 104 deliveries) first. When he was on 90, a graphic flashed by the official scorers indicated that he had 41 singles to his name. As for innovation, a flat-batted pull-drive for six over long on, a couple of reverse sweeps, and three different instances when he went way across to off with his front foot to take the ball onto his hips and leg-glance very fine were indication that he could, once set, break out of his own technical mould.

At the other end, Ganguly was hemmed in by a packed off side cordon set by Ranatunga (the Lankan captain invariably employs a square gully to the Indian opener, with very good results), and was noticeably struggling to pierce the field. However, a facet of his cricket is that Ganguly doesn't generally give it away, showing instead the temperament to grit it out through the rough patches and put his hand up to bat through, once set.

Another feature of his batting is that for a player as slimly built as he is, Ganguly hits some really big sixes -- a tribute to immaculate footwork when coming down to spinners, and perfect timing. There were two of those today, one over the straight field and one over long on, shots picture-perfect in concept and execution.

That Ganguly and Dravid batted well in their mammoth partnership is a given. However, since this tournament is slated as a tune-up to the World Cup, there is one factor that could do with some attention. In an interview being carried on our World Cup site today, Dean Jones makes a point that has been made by many others over time. A team that scores the most singles and conceedes the least dot balls, Deano says, is the side that will win most of its games.

In that context, a graphic flashed by the scorers when the team score was on 190 is interesting -- 96 singles, but also, 114 dot balls. At that point, India were going along at around 5.3, which is a good run rate -- but when you look at those dot balls, you get an idea of just how much more was possible. Ganguly, who continues to run his first runs slow and refuse quick singles, would move from the very good to the truly great category if he made a bit of a push in this direction -- and the difference to the team would be incalculable.

For Sri Lanka, the big problem was a lack of bowling backup to Vaas and Wickramasinghe -- though seven bowlers were tried by Arjuna, none of them had the ability of a Muralitharan or the experience of Dharmasena and Jayasuriya. Adding to the problem was some Teflon-fingered catching (Ganguly had three let offs).

India's scoring rate, which saw them progress from 66/1 in 15 (and even that made possible only because Hemant Boteju gave away 15 in the 15th over) to 87/1 in 20, 126/1 in 25, 149/1 in 30, 171/1 in 35 and 212/1 in 40.

That appeared to put the platform in place for a 300-plus score. However, the imminence of Ganguly's century saw a bit of a lull in the scoring around this point. 39 runs were added between overs 40-45, and in an effort to step things up further, Dravid perished, hitting against the line trying to clear midwicket, and only getting a leading edge to cover.

Around this point, the Indians had the option of sending in the big-hitters -- Agarkar, Shukla, Srinath et al -- with instructions to go for everything. Instead, the think tank preferred to stay with the established order. Azharuddin is a fluid batsman, but he is no slogger, which was what was required in the circumstances, with just over two overs to go. Predictably, he perished on his first big hit, finding Chandana pulling off a great catch diving forward at long off.

Vinod Kambli may be a lot of things, but he is not the favourite of Lady Luck. Here he had the ideal conditions for a comeback -- nice pitch, and bowling that wasn't exactly life threatening. So what happens? He sits inside the pavilion waiting out 49 overs, before getting his turn at bat.

India ended its quota of 50 with 287 on the board, a good very good total if you go by conventional wisdom, which holds that a team with wickets in hand can double its score at the end of 30 overs (India were 149/1 at that point, and ended up just 11 short of doubling it).

The Lankan innings -- Agarkar's back, with a flourish

Scoreboard