da dobrowin： Indian coach John Wright singled out the happenings on the firstevening as the turning point in the first Test against Sri Lanka whichIndia lost by 10 wickets early Friday morning
Rex Clementine17-Aug-2001Indian coach John Wright singled out the happenings on the firstevening as the turning point in the first Test against Sri Lanka whichIndia lost by 10 wickets early Friday morning. “Those couple of latewickets in the first evening were crucial. That took the game awayfrom us. We should have at least put up 250 which would have been acompetitive score,” said the New Zealand born Wright who is with theIndian side on a one-year contract.Wright praised the Sri Lankan attack, “It’s a balanced attack andtheir bowlers bowled well right from the start to make thingsdifficult for us.”The Indian bowlers, for their part, though failedto deliver the goods when the Lankans were batting. “It makes thingsdifficult for the captain when you’ve got the best square cutter inthe middle and the bowlers keep on feeding him in his favourite area,” Wright observed.But he was hopeful that the side would bounce back in Kandy. “We have been in situations such as this before and we got to fight our way back.” He though admitted that restoring parity was not going to be an easy task for his team. “Sri Lanka are a difficult side to beat.”Muttiah Muralitharan once again was the wrecker-in-chief with a fivewicket haul in the Indian second innings. He claimed eight in thematch.Wright says his batsmen have to be more positive in handlingthe Sri Lankan off-spinner. “They have to play their natural game andback themselves. But I don’t think that there’s any secret formula toplay Muralitharan. You can’t say you got to play this way. You got tobe positive against everyone and not to be intimidated by hisreputation.”However Indian captain Sourav Ganguly took a different view on the subject, “Lot of players in this squad with the exceptionof me and Rahul are facing him for the first time. So they’ve got noexperience on how to handle him”Ganguly also paid tribute to the Sri Lankan team, “The Sri Lankansplayed really well. They came up with a good all round performance.”Ganguly, like Wright before him, blamed the batsmen for coming up witha pathetic performance, “After that opening partnership between Rameshand Das we just didn’t bat well. The middle order failed and 187 wasnever going to be enough”The skipper himself was dismissed by fast bowler Dilhara Fernando ontwo occasions in this game as his poor form with the bat continued. “Ihave to score runs. I have scored four hundreds previously againstthis side. I am making mistakes and getting out. I got a bad decisionin the first innings. I got a bad decision in the first Test inZimbabwe too. But this is part and parcel of game. I have been tryingto do everything and I just need to spend sometime in the middle.”