Captain Cool Wants to Seal Series!

Sreelata YellamrazuFeb 3 2009

As the third one day international in Sri Lanka gets underway, the bigger question is - can Dhoni regain his cool and lead his team to follow the tactics that have worked for them so far?

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There are a few issues that needed to be tackled before India attempt to seal the series 3-0. But India have decidedly the fewer of the headaches.

Munaf Patel returned home from injury and made way for Laxmipathy Balaji who is better remembered for his exploits on India's tour to Pakistan in what seemed ages ago since he was injured and lost his way.

But it a bowling allrounder that concerns Gary Kirsten because Mahendra Singh Dhoni has, in a stingy manner, used his fast bowlers reserving them for the Power plays. He appeared to lose his cool in the second ODI but believes that bowlers must learn from his own mistakes and hence, is not in the mood to feed them with ideas himself.

Their fifth bowling option has been employed well and shared all around, but they will need to keep at their task because Dhoni is showing a lot of faith in the part timers and perhaps even compensating for Pragyan Ojha's lack of experience in the absence of Harbhajan Singh.

The other grey area for team India is using their own batting power play and they would certainly look to do better than they did in Colombo in the second match. While they have deliberately attempted to preserve wickets against the likes of Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis, they will need to attack more to convert their starts into impossible targets for the opposition.

Kirsten believes his team is good even at sixty percent, but that would depend a lot on the hosts not pumping their performance percentage as well.

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