Hoping for spectacular end

The Kotla wicket has been in the eye of a storm since the Champions League, and everyone kept their fingers crossed, hoping for the best, reports Subhash Rajta.

The players must have dragged themselves out of their cosy beds quite reluctantly on a typically hazy wintry Delhi morning on Saturday. They must have wondered if it was worth the effort hitting the nets at 10.30am for a dead rubber. The Indian team still got to the Kotla at the scheduled time and went through the session in an evidently less strenuous and lighter mode.

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So the question is, what interests the players as well as the spectators in a dead rubber like Sunday’s final ODI between India and Sri Lanka? What could a team finishing on the losing side in the series look forward to in an inconsequential match, other than the clichéd ‘finish on a winning note’ or ‘salvaging pride’?

Sri Lanka and India will cross swords immediately after this series in a triseries in Bangladesh, and they want to enter that contest high on the confidence that comes with a win. “We have been very competitive and even ahead of our opponents quite a few times in the series. It’s just that we failed to cross the finish line ahead of them,” said Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara. The Delhi game provides them with a fine opportunity to change that course of things and mend whatever has gone wrong for them in the series.

As for India, the inconsequential game will allow them to test their bench strength and field players like Sudeep Tyagi and Ashok Dinda. The skipper MS Dhoni, who is back after serving a two-match ban, however, ruled out too much chopping and changing. “The 4-1 scoreline looks much more impressive than 3-2. So we will field a strong team, with just one or, maximum, two changes,” he said.

Besides, there’s a certain amount of interest building around how the wicket will behave. The Kotla wicket has been in the eye of a storm since the Champions League, and everyone kept their fingers crossed, hoping for the best. “The wicket looks quite different from the regular Kotla wicket. So we will just have to wait before passing any judgment,” said the Indian skipper.

For spectators, however, the insignificance of the match makes little difference. They are expecting a keen contest. “We want to see the match for Sehwag and Dilshan. These two batsmen make every contest a treat to watch,” said a group of college students. And, given the form two dashing openers are in, chances are the crowd will get their money’s worth, regardless of how the wicket behaves.