With Sri Lanka cricket going through one of the darkest periods in it cricket history being thrashed across all formats by all and sundry it would be pertinent to focus our thoughts on how our closest neighbours India are planning for the 2019 Cricket World Cup that will be held in England.
At the moment Indian cricket which two years ago was struggling like Sri Lanka – although not to the same extent, is riding high having unearthed a crop of youngsters who are serving them well with match-winning performances as has been witnessed in the recently concluded Test and ODI series against Sri Lanka.
Whether a struggling Sri Lanka team provided India with the kind of opposition that tested them to the limit is questionable. Did we see the full might of India during the two series or is it because of the poor opposition that Sri Lanka put up that India were simply able to run through them?
“We didn't analyse the opposition at any stage in this series, we only wanted to focus on our strengths and make sure we keep repeating those things out in the middle,” said Indian captain Virat Kohli. “That way the opposition is not something that you need to focus on. We just wanted to execute the plans we made for ourselves as a team regardless of the opposition. It didn't matter to us whether we were playing Sri Lanka or we're going to play Australia back home. For us it was focusing on our team. We didn't sit and think what the difference is between the two sides. If you have an opportunity to win international games you're going to pounce on those opportunities and win, and perform as well. So that's exactly what we did.”
When India arrived in Sri Lanka at the inaugural press conference head coach Ravi Shastri said that his team would play a “ruthless brand of cricket” and to “win at all costs”.
“We want the guys to out there and express themselves and play a brand of cricket that’s ruthless, where you play to win at all costs. No compromise on that,” said Shastri. “If you look at Sri Lanka’s track record playing at home is as good as any side in world cricket right upto the best. As an Indian team we are not going to take them lightly, we will not take things for granted. We like to be consistent so that we keep our no. 1 position in place and above all we look to improve. If we don’t look to improve there is no point playing. You’ve got to try and raise the bar.”
The way they have played in Sri Lanka making a clean sweep of the 3 Tests and 5 ODIs series, India has certainly played the ‘ruthless brand of cricket’ that Shastri had demanded from them. Whether a full strength Sri Lanka team would have given India a good run for their money is questionable because Sri Lanka were never able to have a settled team in any of the matches because of the number of injuries that kept occurring from match to match. In such circumstances it is very difficult to plan and strategise against an opposition that looked well organized and with hardly a chink in their armour.
Analysing the two series Kohli said, “We're doing very well in Test cricket, ODIs we didn't win three games in a row before this. So from the last game in West Indies to now we've won six, that's something that we wanted to address and which we did in this series.
“We wanted to be relentless, we wanted to create good habits and make sure that we're challenging ourselves every time we go out on the park. That helps you when you're going through difficult situations. That's one thing that we addressed before this series and it's really helped us come out here and play how we wanted to play and not let complacency get to us at any stage.
“Good habits are hard to create and once you create them and then if you take the game easy then the game will find out those things and sort you out on the park. We respect the game and that's something we decided to do all throughout regardless of what was happening otherwise.”
Sri Lanka once they come out of the present predicament should take a leaf out of India’s notebook and play the brand of cricket like their neighbours – ruthless and to win at all costs - if they want to recapture their past glory and become a cricketing force they once were.
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