Five teams, including the men in blue, have found the Wankhede Stadium pitch a batting paradise in the previous five T20I matches, with Afghanistan’s 172, chasing South Africa’s 209 in the 2016 ICC Twenty20 World Cup being the lowest.
England posted the highest of 230 for eight wickets when chasing South Africa’s 229 in the same tournament. The high-scoring trend at this venue was turned upside down when Sri Lanka posted 135 for seven with Dasun Shanaka and Akila Dananjaya throwing their bat at Mohammed Siraj and raking in 18 runs for their side off the last six balls.
Then, India made heavy weather of surpassing the target. Its batsmen struggled to find answers against seamers Dushmantha Chameera and Shanaka to make it a tight finish. Just when the match seemed to be going down to the wire, Dinesh Karthik deposited Nuwan Pradeep’s last ball full-toss over mid-wicket and India heaved a sigh of relief before the Sri Lankan skipper Thisara Perera bowled the last over.
Eventually India completed the 3-0 sweep with a five-wicket win, but for once the Indian dugout and the near full house appeared quite tense.
The red-soil based pitch here offers some assistance to seamers and spinners alike, but the wicket prepared by former India opener Sudhir Naik was a far cry from a bowler’s wicket to ring alarm bells.
Though beaten hollow in the first two matches in Cuttack and Indore, Sri Lanka had demonstrated spirit and strength to hit out during the course of the second wicket partnership in the second T20I. Playing the last match of the tour here without much anxiety, it would have hoped to put up a better display with the bat.
But asked to take first strike for the first time in the three-match series, Sri Lanka saw wickets tumbling at regular intervals to give India the upper hand in the first session.
The host went into the match bringing in seamer Mohammed Siraj and off-spinner Washington Sundar, who had turned out to be more than a utility bowler for Rising Pune Supergiant in this year’s IPL.
While the young slow bowler began proceedings in a most encouraging manner and even removed Kusal Perera, it was the splendid lines bowled by left-hand seamer Jaydev Unadkat that played a significant part in Sri Lanka being restricted to a modest total. Unadkat’s two for 15 is the best effort (runs conceded) by a bowler at the Wankhede.
Forcing false shots
Unadkat forced false shots from left hander Niroshan Dickwella and Upul Tharanga. With the openers dispatched to the pavilion quickly, Sri Lanka could not find a way out of the quagmire that it got into by losing six batsmen by the 13th over.
It touched a run rate of 5.2 in the first five overs of the PowerPlay, and then suddenly lifted it to nine, scoring 27 off Siraj, Hardik Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav.
But the fall of the aggressive Sadeera Samarawickrama and Danushka Gunathilaka brought it down to 5.25 by the 12th over.
From here-on, it was an uphill task for Asela Gunaratne, a Mumbai Indians recruit for IPL10, to single-handedly work around the Indian bowling to take his side close to 160. Sri Lanka’s run rate at the end of its innings stood at 6.75, a steep drop from the 9.25 in the previous five matches played here.
Until the match on Sunday, 24 fast bowlers had taken 32 wickets at 38.84 at this venue and 17 spinners had taken 18 wickets at 37.28. Apart from Siraj, who went for 45 from four fours, the other Indian bowlers responded to the decision to field first in a fiercely determined manner, but then they were also helped by some poor batting from the visitors.
