Dilshan’s wicket was crucial: Viru

[minisoji]

Stand-in captain of India Virender Sehwag was all praise for the spin duo of Ravindra Jadeja and Harbhajan Singh for pulling things back after Sri Lanka almost ran amok in the opening overs. “Jadeja has impressed everyone”, he said.

Sehwag refused to admit that the bowling was not working well against Sri Lanka. Ishant had proved very costly in his opening spell. “The way Dilshan was batting, it was extremely difficult for the bowlers to cont a in him.

Ishant had bowled well against him in the T20s and that was why he was given the ball against Dilshan. Bringing Ashish Nehra at first change was the gameplan and it worked”, he said.

Sehwag also heaped praise on Sachin Tendulkar for steering India’s batting till the end. He has been there for 20 years. He knows how to play according to situation, which showed today.

“We would like to keep the momentum going and win the rest of the matches”, he said.

Batting collapse did us in: Sanga

Sri Lanka captain Kumara Sangakara rued the batting collapse for the loss in the third one-dayer and sought better commitment and focus from his players in the next two matches. “From 165 for one in 22 overs to 239 all out in 45th over says it all. From the kind of start we had, we were looking at score beyond 350 to 400. It did not happen and it was just a case of bad batting”, he said. The captain had special praise for Ravindra Jadeja, who scalped four wickets giving only 32 in his 10 overs. He bowled tremendously and took away the momentum from our side. First 20 overs was with us, the rest turned to India, he said. Sangakara said that Jayasuriya could be back in the team. He could be used lower in the order.