The shockingly clueless Indian batting unit was strangled by crafty Sri Lankan spinners, led by five-wicket man Dunith Wellalage, as Rohit Sharma’s men crashed to an embarrassing 110-run defeat in the third and final ODI in Colombo on Wednesday.
Sri Lanka won the three-match series 2-0 after the first match ended in a tie, and this is the Islanders’ first bilateral ODI series victory over India since 1997.
Chasing a competitive 249 on a sharp turner at Premadasa, India were bowled out for a woeful 138 in 26.1 overs, and the new head coach Gautam Gambhir will have a few hard points to ponder early into his stint.
The left-arm spinner Wellalage, who hurt India with the bat till now, chose to bruise the visitors by ball taking five for 27 after opener Avishka Fernando made a well-paced 96 to carry Lanka to 248 for seven.
However, India had a rather good beginning, despite the early departure of Shubman Gill, to their chase, courtesy Rohit Sharma’s breakneck 35 off 20 balls that included an 18-run over off Maheesh Theekshana.
The runs cascaded through a sequence of 6, 4, 4, 4 in the fourth over of the innings.
But sweep, one of the favoured shots of Rohit, brought the downfall of the Indian skipper. His attempt to play it off Wellalage ended in the hands of Kusal Mendis behind the stumps.
Once Rohit walked back, the rest of the Indian batters submerged into a whirlpool of confusion.
Virat Kohli (20) played for turn when there was none and was adjudged leg before to Wellalage.
Rishabh Pant, who was playing his first ODI after his comeback from that horrific car crash, trotted down the track and was beaten in the air by Theekshana to eventually get stumped by Kusal.
Riyan Parag, who made his ODI debut while coming in place of Arshdeep Singh, offered no shot to a straight one from leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay to get bowled.
In between, Shreyas Iyer also fell leg before to Wellalage, taking the total number of lbw and clean bowled dismissals in this Indian innings to seven, and no other crumb of statistics will offer a clearer picture of the muddled Indian minds than that.
“We knew they are used to small grounds and good wickets in India. So they would struggle on a big Premadasa ground. We knew we could get an advantage with some turn on the wicket, and we have good spinners,” Theekshana’s post match TV comments with reference to tracks used during ODI World Cup, was like rubbing salt to the wound.
Before their spinners pushed Indian batters deep into trouble, Lanka managed to work through the Indian bowling through opener Avishka Fernando (96, 102 balls, 9×4, 2×6) and Kusal (59, 82b, 4×4).
India fought through an excellent spell of off-spin by Parag (3/54) but apart from Kuldeep Yadav (1/36) there was no real assistance for him.
Fernando’s knock that came off 102 balls (9×4, 2×6) guided the home side during the most assured batting phase yet in this series, before Parag (3/54 in 9 overs) engineered a familiar mid-innings collapse with his mix of off and leg-spin.
However, the Lankans also had the aid of a pitch that had relatively less bite on it than the ones in the previous games.
But none of it could take away the credit from the effort of Fernando, who stitched two fine partnerships – an 89 for the opening wicket with Pathum Nissanka (45, 65b, 5×4, 2×6) and 82 with Kusal Mendis (59, 82b, 4×4) for the second wicket.
In both those alliances, Fernando was the dominant partner at varying degrees.
Nissanka often matched his associate in aggression, evidenced by the two slog swept sixes off left-arm spinner Axar Patel.
But the blooming stand was cut short by Axar, whose wide delivery was smashed into the hands of Rishabh Pant, who was playing his first ODI since his comeback from that horrific car crash, by Nissanka.
Sri Lanka stayed ahead of India through the Fernando-Kusal partnership, but this time the former was the enforcer.
Fernando spoiled the figures of Mohammed Siraj (1/78 in 9 overs), who was unusually wayward in his line and length.
In fact, the Lankan right-hander enjoyed the extra speed of Siraj that enabled him to unfurl his bread and butter pull shot twice in a row to muscle the Indian for sixes.
There were deft touches too like a silken flick off Siraj that sped to the square leg boundary.
However, just when he was within touching distance of his fourth ODI hundred, Fernando missed a skiddy leg-break from Parag to get caught in front of the wicket.
At 171 for two in the 36th over, Lanka had a very good platform to push towards a total in the vicinity of 280 or a bit more.
But Parag removed skipper Charith Asalanka (10), who was trapped leg before, and Dunith Wellalage (2) that denied Lanka the late-order momentum.
The ball that got rid of Wellalage, who has been a thorn for India in this series, was a gem. Parag pitched an overspun delivery on the off-stump and it turned away marginally to beat the down-coming bat of the left-hander to rattle the stumps.
Soon Siraj saw the back of Sadeera Samarawickrama and Washington Sundar castled Janith Liyanage as SL slipped to 199 for six, losing five wickets for 28 runs.
Kusal and Kamindu Mendis added 36 runs for the seventh wicket to push them close to 250. With pitch offering significant turn towards the latter half of the Sri Lankan innings, India will find it difficult to chase down the target.
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