Stand-in captain Shikhar Dhawan anchored the innings brilliantly around Prithvi Shaw and Ishan Kishan’s impressive onslaught to help India get their Sri Lanka tour off to a winning start on Sunday. The visitors made a comfortable feast of the 263-run target in the first ODI on what was a slow-paced track in Colombo’s R Premadasa.
Dhawan made a highly composed knock of 86 not out, where he was happy to be second fiddle to Shaw and Kishan in the early part of the innings and then opened up to play his free-flowing natural game.
Shaw only batted 24 balls in his innings but blazed 43 runs off those, taking apart Sri Lanka’s new-ball duo of Dushmantha Chameera and Isuru Udana. His aggressive innings at the top featured nine fours and gave a glimpse into the future where he could potentially be India’s long-term top-order aggressor.
Shaw looked good for more until he lost his focus after a blow to his head off a bouncer from Chameera and miscued a hit to long-on facing part-timer Dhananjaya de Silva.
From where Shaw left, Kishan carried on as he started off his ODI career with a bang, hitting De Silva for a maximum down the ground. Kishan’s promotion to No.3 took some people by surprise since Shaw had already given the team a quickfire start, and there was no real need for any urgency with the asking rate.
The idea perhaps was to keep the foot on the accelerator and not allow Sri Lanka any window of opportunity to control the game. Kishan made his opportunity count wonderfully by hitting an attacking half-century (59 off 42 balls), where he was especially severe on Sri Lanka’s spin bowlers. When Kishan was out caught, India had already cleaned up 143 of the 263 runs required inside 18 overs.
Manish Pandey joined Dhawan at the other end, and they stitched a sedate partnership where the skipper soon reached past fifty. Manish got out on 28, but the veteran left-hander now had the in-form Suryakumar Yadav for company. Suryakumar also batted in the mould of Kishan and Shaw for his 20-ball 31 not out and took his team home alongside the captain.
Among the Sri Lankan bowlers, De Silva prized out Shaw and Manish in his otherwise expensive five-over spell of 2/49, and Lakshan Sandakan got Kishan out during his own 1/53. Those were the only wickets to fall as at no stage did the hosts look like stopping the Indian juggernaut.
Earlier in the day, India restricted Sri Lanka to a manageable total after losing the toss and being asked to bowl first. The home team had a decent enough start to their innings, with openers Avishka Fernando (35) and Minod Bhanuka (27) playing India’s slightly rusty quicks Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Deepak Chahar quite well and stitching a stand of 49 for the first wicket. The home team also faced the Indian quicks well in the last phase of the innings where Bhuvneshwar worryingly didn’t land his yorkers and was taken for maximums through the on-side.
In-between, however, India’s spinners never allowed them to get going. Spin twins Yuzvendra Chahal (2/52) and Kuldeep Yadav (2/48) looked in control, while all-rounder Krunal Pandya (1/26) maintained his discipline and kept a very tight leash on run-scoring. They shared five wickets between them. Paceman Chahar also ended with two wickets in his spell of 2/37. He didn’t complete his quota in the death overs, where India trusted Hardik Pandya (1/34) instead of from an end.
Chamika Karunaratne (43) was the top-scorer of the Sri Lankan innings, where earlier on Avishka, Charith Asalanka (38), and skipper Dasun Shanaka (39) had also batted quite nicely without ever threatening to take the game away from India.
Brief scores
Sri Lanka 262/9 in 50 overs (Chamika Karunaratne 43, Dasun Shanaka 39; Deepak Chahar 2/37, Kuldeep Yadav 2/48) lost to India 263/3 in 36.4 overs (Shikhar Dhawan 86, Ishan Kishan 59; Dhananjaya de Silva 2/49, Lakshan Sandakan 1/53) by 7 wickets
