1st T20I
India 101 (18.5/20 ov)
Sri Lanka 105/5 (18/20 ov)
Sri Lanka won by 5 wickets (with 12 balls remaining)
Kasun Rajitha, Dushmantha Chameera and Dasun Shanaka - Sri Lanka's lanky seam-bowling labour force - came upon a thoroughly surprising green Pune deck, and wound up delivering their team a surprisingly thorough victory. The three quicks took eight wickets for 59 between them, to blow India away for 101. Sri Lanka's inexperienced batsmen were rarely at ease in pursuit, but did well enough to get to the target with five wickets in hand and two overs to spare.
Chameera had provided glimpses at his penetrative potential during the recent tour of New Zealand, but Rajitha and Shanaka had gone unheralded until today. If Binura Fernando - the left-arm quick - had not injured a hamstring ahead of this match, Rajitha might not even have debuted. Instead, he claimed two wickets in a tone-setting first over and finished with 3 for 29. Shanaka is in the team largely for his batting, but bowled magic deliveries through the middle overs, uprooting Suresh Raina's leg stump with an in-dipper, and bouncing MS Dhoni second ball. He took 3 for 16.
Fresh from Australian run-gluts, India's route to defeat was paved with over-ambition. Even after the pitch had proved itself spicy, big shots continued to be attempted. Edges kept being collected. Wickets continued to tumble. The biggest stand of their innings was between R Ashwin and Ashish Nehra, who put on 28 for the eighth wicket. Without Ashwin's 31 not out, their total might have been closer to 80.
Sri Lanka's innings appeared to be heading in the same direction at 23 for 2 in the fifth over, but Dinesh Chandimal and Chamara Kapugedera combined for 39 tension-relieving runs. Three late wickets fell, but the target was so small, even this scratchy batting performance was more than good enough. The victory puts Sri Lanka back on top of the ICC T20 rankings.
It was Rajitha who first put the fire in a young Sri Lanka team. Barely heard of before he took five wickets in a tour match against the Indians in August last year, he delivered an immaculate first international over, seaming the ball sharply away from right-handers, and generating fine pace and carry. His first wicket came second ball. The length delivery stopped a little on Rohit Sharma, who hit aerially down the ground. Chameera moved across from mid-off to help a stick-thin fast-bowling brother out, diving feet off the ground to pouch that catch. Clearly excited by that scalp, Rajitha ended the over with a seaming short ball at Ajinkya Rahane, whose leading edge carried to an advancing cover.
He had a catch dropped off Raina's inside edge in between, but Rajitha soon had a third wicket, in the fifth over. Then Shanaka took over, bowling slower, but just as accurately. The Raina-Dhoni double blow in his first over put India at 51 for 5. It also doubled Shanaka's wicket-tally in all T20s. He had played in 26 matches before this, and was called upon to bowl in less than a quarter of those games.
Chameera troubled the middle order with raw pace until Ashwin picked India off the floor with a sensible approach and excellent timing. He smoked Chameera through the leg side for four first ball, but largely awaited the bad deliveries to play his big shots. In the end, Ashwin just ran out of partners - Nehra succumbing to Chameera's pace and Jasprit Bumrah running himself out, in the 19th over.
Nehra dismissed Sri Lanka's openers, who were also guilty of attempting too many boundaries while the ball was still zipping around. Chandimal and Kapugedera were streaky but smart, looking for singles and twos, with the required rate always under a run-a-ball. Chandimal top-scored with 35, Kapugedera hit 25.
MS Dhoni banked on spin through the middle overs, and the slow bowlers did remove Kapugedara, Chandimal and, later, Shanaka. But Sri Lanka had stacked their side with allrounders again, and batted deep. Milinda Siriwardana was on hand to apply the finish, hitting 21 not out from 14. Ashwin was the best of India's bowlers as well, picking up 2 for 13 from his three overs.
2nd T20I
India 196/6 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka 127/9 (20/20 ov)
India won by 69 runs
On a dry surface in a dusty Ranchi ground, India's top order moved into customary home form, and their bowlers exposed a fragile Sri Lanka top order. Shikhar Dhawan was bruiser-in-prime, unleashing an early shellacking that brought him 51, and set the team on course to a big total. They reached 196 for 6, thanks to helpful hands from the top five, which today included a pinch-hitting Hardik Pandya. That total was 69 too many for Sri Lanka.
Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina and Pandya all got to at least 25 - Pandya the quickest of the lot, striking two sixes and a four in his 12-ball 27. On a pitch with little pace and minimal seam movement, the pacers that had delivered Sri Lanka's Pune win, were expensive. Even Sri Lanka's first T20 international hat-trick - to Thisara Perera - barely made a difference, coming as it did in the penultimate over. Dinesh Chandimal will perhaps rue having chosen to bowl first. The track looked a good one for batting, and Sri Lanka have lately been a modest chasing side.
R Ashwin had troubled Sri Lanka's batsmen even on the Pune green top, and MS Dhoni savvily had him open the bowling here. Ashwin removed a returning Tillakaratne Dilshan second ball, and the chase never really recovered from that. Soon they were 3 for 16, Ashish Nehra claiming two early scalps. Chandimal and Chamara Kapugedara then embarked on a recovery that was far too slow to give the visitors any real chance of victory, and wickets tumbled late in the middle overs, as the required rate crept up through the teens. Ashwin finished with 3 for 14 from his four overs.
Rajitha had begun his second T20 much worse than his first, spraying the first ball wide for Rohit Sharma to crash behind point, and the bowler's evening did not improve much from there. Dhawan cracked four offside fours off his next over - the fourth of the match - to send the innings into overdrive, having already picked up legside sixes off Thisara and Sachithra Senanayake. Dhawan hit four more boundaries before the end of the Powerplay, as he clobbered spin and seam square of the wicket, largely on the legside. After six overs, India had sped to 70 - Dhawan's share of that score 48 off 21.
He got to 50 off his 22nd delivery, but departed soon after, nicking a throat-high Dushmantha Chameera ball to the keeper. That wicket bought Sri Lanka brief respite. They bowled five overs for 30, before the runs began to flow again.
Chameera claimed Rohit's scalp in the 14th over, with an athletic return catch, and Senanayake removed Rahane soon after, but India's final push began when Pandya arrived at the crease a few places higher than he would normally bat. After two sighters he began his assault. Rajitha was struck to the midwicket boundary, before consecutive Senanayake deliveries were lifted high over deep midwicket.
Raina added his own finishing blows to the closing surge, taking particular liking to Chameera, whose figures he ruined. Having sent down his first two overs for 10 runs, Chameera saw his third disappear for 18. His last also went for 10. In between Perera took a low-key hat-trick, having Pandya, Raina and Yuvraj Singh hole out to low full tosses. His figures were dramatically improved as a result. He finished with 3 for 33 from three overs.
Dilshan was stumped over-reaching off the first ball he faced. Seekkuge Prasanna was sent up the order to provide some early impetus, but lacked the technique to deal with the new ball, and chewed up four balls for one run. Danushka Gunathilaka amplified Sri Lanka's problems at the top of the order with another poor score.
Kapugedara and Chandimal's 49-ball fourth-wicket partnership yielded only 52 runs. By the time they had departed, off successive Jadeja deliveries in the 12th over, the required rate had climbed to more than 14.5, and the chase was kaput. Dasun Shanaka and Milinda Siriwardana struck some late sixes, doing good to at least their own batting confidence, if nothing much for the team cause.
3rd T20I
Sri Lanka 82 (18/20 ov)
India 84/1 (13.5/20 ov)
India won by 9 wickets (with 37 balls remaining)
In his first three overs, bowled at the start of the match, R Ashwin bowled India to their first bilateral T20I series win at home. India bowled Sri Lanka out for their lowest total, 82, to retain their No. 1 ranking, which was on the line in the series decider. Ashwin's 4 for 8 was the best figures for an Indian in T20Is, beating his own 4 for 11.
Ashwin's immediate impact was crucial because the pitch turned square, and India might have unwittingly given Sri Lanka the second use of such a track. You couldn't have faulted MS Dhoni, though: the pitch looked white, had zero moisture, and no big cracks. Given the dew expected later in the day, it seemed a prudent decision to ask Sri Lanka to bat because the pitch didn't look like it would help spin anyway.
Just like in Pune where India were left thinking they would have been in the game had they scored 130 or so as opposed to the 101 all out, Sri Lanka could have given India a fight with a half-decent total because the ball turned square even for Ravindra Jadeja and Suresh Raina. Ashwin left them in no position to get a fighting total, though.
Ashwin, given the new ball, was happy to give it a rip and some flight, mixing in the seam-up delivery that swings away from the right-hand batsmen. Sri Lanka, though, came out with a plan to try to hit Ashwin out of the attack. Tillakaratne Dilshan faced the second ball of the match, got a single, and immediately signaled to his partner, Niroshan Dickwella that the ball was turning already. It didn't have any impact on Dickwella, who left his crease early and walked past an offbreak that Ashwin bowled deliberately short.
In the same over, Dilshan was done in by a sharp offbreak from round the wicket, turning enough to beat the inside edge and hit his pad inside the line, but not turning too much to be given out lbw. If Dickwella played a headless shot, Dilshan's was purely a bowler's wicket: beaten on the forward defensive by the dip and the turn. Captain Dinesh Chandimal looked to counterattack, hit two fours off Ashish Nehra, but skied Ashwin in his second over. In his third over, Ashwin enjoyed some luck as debutant Asela Gunaratne was given out caught at leg slip off his pad. Ashwin had now reduced Sri Lanka to 20 for 4 in the fifth over. In a format not as versatile as the traditional ones, the damage had already been done.
The problem with the rest of Sri Lanka innings was twofold: the ball was turning, and the batsmen kept trying the big hits as opposed to looking for a partnership. This was quite similar to what happened with India even as the ball seamed in Pune. Milinda Siriwardana faced only two balls even though he spent three overs in the middle. The first one he pulled Jasprit Bumrah for four, but when he tried the pull second ball he chose a Nehra delivery that was not short enough and also skidded through to bowl him.
Only a high full toss from Yuvraj that went for six, and the free hit that was given repeat treatment by Dasun Shanaka gave Sri Lanka's innings some momentum. Ashwin came awfully close to registering the first international five-for for India, but Jadeja and Raina kept the pressure up and the wickets kept falling. Jadeja's brilliance showed in the field too, with a delicate back-hand flick to run Seekkuge Prasanna out and catch Thisara Perera in the deep.
Under hardly any pressure, India walked away to their target with 37 balls remaining even though the turning pitch made stroke-play difficult. Shikhar Dhawan again displayed his improved leg-side play in his run-a-ball 46 whereas question marks over Ajinkya Rahane's hitting ability on slower surfaces remained as he mis-hit a few attempted big hits in his unbeaten 24 off 22.
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