The current best batsman and the best bowler at the death in One Day Internationals were up against each other with four runs to get off the final delivery at the Adelaide Oval. It was just fair that neither Lasith Malinga nor M S Dhoni ended up on the losing side. With four runs required, Dhoni played the ball over the extra cover fielder just enough to get the three runs for the match to end up with the same total.
India, chasing a total of 237 was coasting at one stage with Gambhir steadying the ship at the top of the order. He was calm and collected in getting to his yet another half century of this series. While on 91, he was run out due to misunderstanding in the calling between the wickets with his skipper. At that stage, India needed another 59 runs to win. Jadeja and Ashwin gave decent support to their captain with useful contributions. But the pace at which the Indian batsmen including Dhoni were scoring meant that their required rate per over was always increasing. As expected, it was all left to Dhoni to repeat his heroics as he did the other night against Australia at the same venue.
Earlier in the afternoon, Sri Lanka won the toss and decided to bat first on a good batting wicket that looked full of runs. The Sri Lankan run scoring and more so their wicket losing pattern in this series came to fore yet again as they lost wickets at moments when they would have liked to seize the initiative. It was their skipper Mahela Jayawardene, who lost his wicket at the start of the batting power play when the score was 173 and was looking to post a big total. That wicket was the start of Sri Lanka’s slide as they kept losing regular wickets, thereby not able to accelerate with their scoring in the death overs. Once again it was Dinesh Chandimal, who looked the best among SL batsmen as he scored 81.
It wasn’t only the players who were tensed in a dramatic game, even umpire Nigel Llong felt the heat as he missed out on counting the 6th ball of the 30th over from Malinga. In hindsight, this delivery could have changed the course of the game but as record books would say India tied a game against Sri Lanka in Adelaide Oval on Feb 14th 2012.
