With the Champions Trophy round the corner, it is an area of concern for the Indian team, and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was ready to admit so ahead of the match.
The defeat that India suffered in the last league match of the Compaq tri-series can be largely blamed on the conditions, which give an enormous advantage to the team batting first, but there are some aspects which need to be tightened up in the final against Sri Lanka irrespective of who gets the first strike.
The most important is fielding, which any team that is hoping to be the top side in the world, needs to be good at. With the Champions Trophy round the corner, it is an area of concern for the Indian team, and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was ready to admit so ahead of the match that can once again perch them on top of the rankings after they lost the top spot within a day earlier in the tournament.
“Our fielding was not good in the last match but there is not much we can do about it. The playing XI that we have, consists largely of safe players what with the likes of Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma not in the team. We can’t expect to suddenly become a brilliant fielding side,” said Dhoni.
Ashish Nehra dropped an easy catch towards the end of the Sri Lankan innings while the ground fielding left a lot to be desired as the home side set a difficult 308-run target for India. Better fielding could have cut down on the runs, but Dhoni also felt the team did not bowl to the field.
“It was a bad day in office right from the time we lost the toss. The bowlers gave away some easy runs, but I guess the fatigue of playing on two consecutive days also had an effect,” he said about the 139-run defeat, the biggest margin of loss for India in Sri Lanka.
Dhoni hoped he would be lucky with the toss this time around. “Once you win the toss, the game is 60-40 in your favour. And once you score 250 plus, it is 80 per cent yours,” said Dhoni.
Though the Indian batting line-up is a formidable one and also has a dependable backbone in the form of Rahul Dravid, the Sri Lankans suddenly look a different side with the return to form of Sanath Jayasuriya and the re-incarnation of Thilan Samaraweera as a one-day batsman.
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