Catches Really Do Win Matches!!

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iSporter Suraj Kori shares his views and comments on India’s performance against Sri Lanka in the T20 and the very many catches that were ‘missed’. The question is - was it a genuine miss or was it a case of clumsiness and ‘buttery fingers’? Lets find out.

Sri Lanka thumped the hosts by 26 runs having outplayed them in all the three departments of the game. Team India in no terms looked competitive and it looked as if they took the T20 series as a practice match before the ODI series.

To start off lets talk about the bowling attack- the Indian bowlers subdued the explosive opening pair of Sri Lanka but this lasted for just some overs. Once they got going there was no one stopping them. The absence of strike bowlers Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh was quite evident. The bowlers didn’t get their line and length and struggled a lot. The Lankans scored heavily on the flat track against a relatively inexperienced bowling attack. The Lankan batsmen did not spare any of Indian bowlers and hit them mercilessly all over the ground.

The Indian batsmen in their own way contributed to the loss at the hands of visitors. The young middle order hasn’t really clicked for the home team in this format of the game for quite some time. I personally felt that Dhoni shouldn’t have promoted himself at number 3. Instead he should have come down the order to strengthen the lower middle order as there is no experienced player other than Vice Captain Yuvraj Singh. The Lankan captain Kumara Sangakkara played a captain’s knock and led from the front for which he was awarded the ‘man of the match’ award. The Indian captain on the other hand came up the order which did not help India in any way. A lot was expected from Rohit Sharma who made a come back after a while but he gave away his wicket by getting run out when the second run was never on.

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However the main reason for the host's loss was their fielding. They dropped as many as five catches apart from the numerous lapses in fielding! Five sure catches that could have been five straight wickets! Rohit Sharma and Ishant Sharma dropped return catches of their own bowling. Ishant Sharma bowled quite well but his fielding didn’t match up. He dropped an easy catch of Sangakkara and also missed an easy run out opportunity in his own over. You can’t expect a player of an international repute to miss the stumps from that short a distance! Well, there is not much you can expect from other fielders when your strongest fielder Yuvraj Singh misses an easy catch. He dropped Sangakkara at point that literally came straight for his hands! I think Mike Young had a very bad day to start as the fielding coach of India. The Indians though are not very bad at fielding but looking at their performance I must say that he is going to have a very tough job ahead! Good luck to Mike!

There is a saying in cricket ‘catches win matches’ and it was an apt saying for India’s situation in the last match. Had India been able to cling onto those catches then they were on their road to victory for sure! But sadly, it appeared as if Indian fielders had applied butter to their hands! Come on guys can we afford to be this careless?

It’s been long since India won a T20 international and I’m sure they would love nothing less than to get back on winning track. Let’s try and see if they bag the next match!