If the Indian team returned from South Africa glum faced after missing out on a wonderful opportunity to secure for the first time a series Test win there, they will leave for the West Indies with a smile on their faces and a spring in their step. The BCCI decision to have the two four match series may well have been to help their media partner recover some of its investments but it turned out to be a God send for a team down in the dumps after the South Africa tour. Sure it could have gone the other way too if the Indian team had lost the series to West Indies and especially to Sri Lanka who are in their group for the World Cup. These eight games gave the selectors the scope to experiment which they did partially and it also afforded some players the chance to seal a place for themselves in the World cup squad.

The matches also allowed the selectors to check out the fitness of some of the injured players and Munaf Patel and Yuvraj Singh came through that with flying colours. Yuvraj’s sparkling batting in the final one dayer against Sri Lanka was the cherry on the cake for India. Not only did the left hander field as brilliantly as he usually does but he also struck the ball long and hard and in the company of Ganguly made a challenging target look pretty common.

Robin Uthappa, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni all played fine innings during the series to give India’s batting a nice healthy glow about it. Uthappa, Ganguly and Yuvraj did not play in the One Dayers in South Africa and thus did not suffer from the trauma of defeat in these games. They came in with a fresh burning desire to make the most of the opportunities that the One Dayers provided and did so with élan.

Ganguly getting the Man of the Series award does bring into question why he was left out of the Indian one day squad at all as also the omission of Robin Uthappa from the team to South Africa. But this is not the time to look back but to look ahead and hope that any misunderstandings and bad blood is over and done with.

In the bowling department Zaheer Khan continued his impressive come back to the team giving early breakthroughs every time and with Agarkar bowling cannily and Munaf also picking wickets the Indian bowling line up looks pretty settled. Both Kumble and Harbhajan may not have been among the wickets but they bring a lot of experience to the party and they were never really collared by the batsmen. The Indian fielding was more than capable in the series and with a bit more work should be able to hold its own in the World Cup.

The Sri Lankans were without two of their most experienced cricketers Muthiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas and that made the difference as the Indians were able to get to big targets without too much worry. The strength of the Sri Lankans has been the early wickets that Vaas gets and the middle overs where Muralitharan not only picks wickets but also chokes the runs. So India were not only able to get off to good starts but when they lost wickets the middle order was able to recover and take the team home. The failure of their captain Jayawardene and the struggle of Jayasuriya and Atapattu put a lot of pressure on the Lankans.

Sangakarra scored a century building his innings up to a terrific crescendo and Chamara Silva looked a great prospect. So even though Lanka lost the series 3-1 they will go back knowing that they have a good side and can cause more than an upset or two. The psychological advantage when these two neighbours meet in the West Indies next month will be with India but as we all know a few overs can change that in a jiffy. Professional Management Group