There are many reasons why this defeat however was not a huge surprise to people in the know.  First of all India approached the series with the level of preparation that teams such as Australia wouldn’t even consider if they were playing Bangladesh.  They had a short “training” camp, but no serious competitive cricket for about half the team, right before the tour.  Secondly, the only practice match before the first Test was again a non-first class 12 a side fixture, with 11 to bat and a different 11 to bowl and field.  Thirdly, the Indians, including their new Coach and their care taker captain, kept on harping about the oodles of experience in the side, as if that alone would be enough.  Finally, they were faced with an opposition that believes, and quite rightly too, that it is nearly unbeatable at home, and who while happy to partake in the icing and gravy provided by the three-ring cricket circus called the IPL, had their priorities right, and were focused like a laser beam on playing Test cricket.

The Indians, not for the first time, were caught with the wrong cricketing wardrobe.  They were like guys who wore Polo shirts and shorts to a Tuxedo and Top Hat affair.  This was particularly surprising as the team included half a dozen specialist Test players, including the Captain.  One hopes they can quickly remedy this cricketing wardrobe malfunction and play genuine Test cricket in the next two matches.  This will mean intensity of focus, ability to grind it out, and most of all patience and persistence including playing session by session.  It was particularly galling that India could not be said to have won a single session, though arguably they had the better of the first (and only) one on a rain interrupted first day.

What was however pleasing to a cricketing traditionalist would have been the return of high class spin as a potent attacking weapon from both ends in a Test match, and that too on a wicket that was not a vicious turner by any means.  What was disturbing however, was that Indian batsmen, who were among the pre-eminent players of high quality spin, were all at sea against such bowling.  I can’t recall a single Test match where India lost 19 out of 20 wickets to spin.  In a way this was the perfect opposite to India’s historic wins at the Wanderers and then again more recently at Perth.  Maybe the fact that India has played less than forty Tests at home since the turn of the mellenium, on increasingly spin unfriendly tracks, has meant that Indian players are no longer comfortable playing high quality spin on spin friendly tracks.  The collapses in the past to the likes of Shaun Udal only bolster that view.

Still the performance by the dynamic duo of Muthiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis, was one that has been bettered only once in the entire history of the game.  The only time a spin duo has been more successful was when the combo of Jim Laker and Tony Lock snapped up all twenty Australian wickets over fifty years ago in the summer of 1956.  And like the duo of Laker and Lock, O’Rielly and Grimmet, Ramadhin and Valentine, Bedi and Chandra/Prasanna, even Kumble and Harbhajan, who had a forgetable match here, the new Sri Lankan partners in tweak have ensured that once again Spin is Kiing!  

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