Date-stamped : 06 Sep94 - 14:32 4 Nation Singer ODI tournament India v Sri Lanka, Match #1 Premadasa Stadium, Colombo, 5 September 1994 ====> 4 Sep 1994 Sad day for all the cricket despos`. Waited and waited !! Oh God!! It was raining cats and dogs. And finally the men in the white coats came over to the pitch., said "wow!! it`s fine now finally". And millions had a sigh of relief. And so the coin flipped and Lankan battalion was out there ready to field. And the Indian guys sachin and prabhakar were out there too very soon contemplating how much a winning score might be in 40-overs-a- side match. The match started finally and went through for 4 overs. Sachin had 4 lofted shots (and the sloppy outfield fetched him the boun- dary only once) and it started raining again when the Indian score was 15/0 - umpires inspected the pitch at 4.25 PM (IST) and put off the match to the next day i.e., Mon Sep 5 1994. So. good luck to the despos, fans, aficianados and all sorts of people. The match is re-scheduled for : September 5 : Sri Lanka v India Contributed by shailesh (shailesh@wipro.wipsys.soft.net) ====> 5 Sep 1994 Lanka beat India in one-day match Sri Lanka beat India by seven wickets in the opening match of the four-nation one-day cricket tournament on Monday. Indian batsmen managed only one six and one four but still scored at five runs an over as they reached 125 for five against Sri Lanka on Monday in the opening match of a four-nation series reduced to 25 overs a side by rain. In conditions where the outfield was slow, cap- tain Mohammed Azharuddin scored the only four in making 25 from 35 deliveries while Atul Bedade hit the lone six in a run-a-ball score of 21. Left-hander Vinod Kambli top-scored with an unde- feated 30 off 38 balls. The regular fall of wickets was hardly surprising in the circumstances and paceman Pramodya Wickremasinghe returned the best bowling figures for Sri Lanka with three for 28 in his quota of five overs. Contributed by Vicky (vigneswa@sisko.ecs.umass.edu) ====> more In a rain reduced match to 25 overs, India managed 125 in 25 overs for 5 (or so). On a soggy and wet field, the task at hand was to get singles and hit the ball over the fielders. Only SRT showed a willingness to do that; others hit the ball hard but straight to fielders. SRT made just 6 and once he left the bat- ting seemed bereft of ideas. In reply SL made the required runs with a few balls left in the final over but the issue had been settled before that. SL`s batsmen ran a lot of singles: I can only think of about three boundaries in their innings. Not much should be read into the result of a OD game but India seemed to be rusty. I noticed several problems. It was clear that Kapil`s role in the team is unclear to him and to Azhar. Today Azhar brought him in to bowl in the middle of the innings and gave him two overs. SRT bowled before Kapil. P`kar and Sri- nath opened the attack. Is Kapil going to bowl the garbage overs in the middle, i.e., a fifth bowler? In the batting line- up, Kapil got to face only 1 ball. With his big hitting talent, shoudn`t he be coming in earlier? As I have said, both Azhar and Kapil seemed lost as to Kapil`s role. Hopefully this will be sorted out by the next game. The other disappointment was Chauhan. I expected him to turn the ball a lot on this wicket and obviously Azhar had saved him for the last ten overs. But he never got his line right and did not turn the ball a lot. An off spinner in OD cricket must tie the batsmen down. Whereas Kalpage bowled well and turned the ball, Chauhan was disappointing. Srinath was expensive, Kapil went for 15 in two overs, P`kar was OK but not great. Kumble was the best bowler for India. Howev- er, again I was surprised that Kumble did not turn a single ball! On a wicket where Jayasuriya and Kalpage could do so much, Kumble did not turn his leg breaks. Most of his deliveries went straight through or came into the right hander with the arm. He is difficult to get away and bowls a good line but I would really like to know if he can turn the ball. I have seen him in three games and he has not turned the ball once. As to fielding, India were quite bad and SL was superb. India gave away at least 6 overthrows. None of the bowlers were prepared to stand behind the stumps to gather the throws when quick singles were being taken. In post match comments, Azhar was obviously upset. He said that he could not understand why certain players do not understand their roles etc even though they have been told a number of times. He made no excuses and simply said that India played badly and needs to improve. In the final analysis, India is starting out on a very busy schedule. It is early days and the team has not played together as a team since April. They looked rusty. If I were the manager, I would get Kapil a more prominent role in the team. P`kar is wasted as an opener in ODIs. I would get Kapil to open, and Bedade slog in the middle order. Here is the batting order I would use: Kapil, Sidhu, SRT, Azhar, Kambli, Bedade, P`kar. I would switch Bedade and Kambli as required. I understand that Azhar wants SRT to get a quick runs up front (with P`kar hanging around) but the problem is that once SRT goes, the side seems to flounder. This order would also bring Kapil into a role, a quick 30 or so, and then SRT can take over. Contributed by Shamim.Naqvi (shamim@jazz.bellcore.com)