Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni put their heads down, indulged in some good old-fashioned singles and twos, went on to score half-centuries, and saw India overcome the early loss of wickets to reach the target of 231. Dravid and Dhoni's 133-run partnership was fitting culmination to Zaheer Khan's splendid effort earlier in the day when he destroyed the Sri Lankan batting order with his first one-day five-for.
Zaheer's fiery five-for - three of them to cripple the Sri Lankan top order and two to kill the lower-order resistance - had helped restrict Sri Lanka. They threatened to fully recover from the early and the mid-innings blows and be in a position to launch an assault but never quite got to doing it as India kept getting wickets at crucial junctures. Sri Lanka could only manage to stay competitive at best, after being 26 for 3 and 91 for 5, with Russel Arnold anchoring the second half of the innings with a typically busy 83-ball 66.
A damp outfield had delayed the start of play by half an hour but Zaheer made up for lost time with an explosive start, nailing three wickets in his first three overs. For the first one he was helped by Sourav Ganguly, running backwards from square leg and diving full-length to get rid of Sanath Jayasuriya, who went for the pull shot and was cramped for room. Two balls later, Zaheer trapped the other opener, Upul Tharanga, with a sharp in-cutter. When Kumar Sangakkara played on in the next over, Zaheer's figures read 2.3-0-3-3. Marvan Atapattu went about denting them somewhat - the last three overs of his first spell went for 23 - but the decisive blows had already been struck. He returned to scalp 2 for 11 in his last three-over spell and round off a memorable day.
India's chase wasn't a canter by any means. Virender Sehwag, back at the top of the order, ballooned a catch to point - after hanging his bat limply against a short ball from Dilhara Fernando. Sachin Tendulkar was the next to go when he played at an effort ball from Nuwan Kulasekara without moving his feet, and edged it on to his stumps. Yuvraj Singh and Ganguly pushed the score along with a 48-run stand - Ganguly missed what would have been his fourth half-century in his last five innings Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni batted sensibly, running every possible run, cutting down the risks, and capitalising on the bad deliveries © Getty Images
- but their dismissals seemed to trigger a nervy period.
Dhoni joined Dravid when the situation looked threateningly similar to Rajkot - Ganguly gone and India 94 for 4. After India had lost the Rajkot game, Dravid said one of their set batsmen - Tendulkar and Ganguly in that case - should have gone on to score a big one. Today Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh, after looking good, were back in the pavilion, and it probably was the time for Dravid to lead by example. He and Dhoni batted sensibly, running every possible run, cutting down the risks, and capitalising on the bad deliveries. An indication of their discretion was that Dhoni had not hit a single boundary off the first 49 balls he faced.
In the middle overs, India's asking-rate was similar to that of the previous game but there was no panic this time; neither did they have to contend with stifling yorkers from Lasith Malinga because he'd been rested for this game. As the target came closer and the crowd started getting vociferous and demanded for sixes, it would have been easy for the batsmen to get carried away and start going for a few big ones. But both Dhoni and Dravid showed restraint until the target came within 10, when Dravid struck the first six of the match.
Sri Lanka made a match of this largely because of two middle-order partnerships that revived them. First it was a 76-run fourth-wicket stand between Atapattu and Mahela Jayawardene. Their dismissals in consecutive overs, brought together Tillakaratne Dilshan and Arnold and the duo added 89 runs for the sixth wicket and looked like they could take Sri Lanka beyond 250. They had benefited from the fifth-bowler combination of Tendulkar and Sehwag, who gave away 63 runs between them with Tendulkar going for 33 in 4 overs. But Harbhajan came back and in his last over got Dilshan to edge a top spinner that had extra bounce on it. That wicket triggered the late-innings collapse as Sri Lanka were contained to 230, a total that in the final analysis was just not enough on a pitch that got progressively better for batting.
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