I wonder, how much has experience made its impact here. Zaheer and Nehra have played close to 200 ODIs between them, while Harbhajan is a veteran as well. On the other hand, the bottom five of Sri Lanka have collectively barely played as much as one of these. Even Tendulkar had a role in two of the last three dismissals. The mistakes made by the Lankans, particularly carrying the bat in the air while entering the crease, suggest that these are rookies, lightweights, who haven't spent much in the middle.
Looking at dropped catches and misfields by both teams, I wonder how much of it is due to the hard impact of the travelling ball. Virat's drop, for instance, was almost spontaneous, as it hit him very hard. Later on, after 'dropping' one difficult catch, Harbhajan was briefly injured trying to save a boundary. Both teams seem to fall apart when the opposition batting takes the attack to them, in bowling and fielding.
While Jimmy says that they should pick a team for ODIs with fielding being a basic requirement, we've seen Indian teams hold at least four misfits even as late as 2007, who are weak on the field. The surprising thing is that there are none in this team- every one of these is a good fielder, who's struggling right now. After all, a top fielder like Raina drops a catch or misses a direct hit. Do you drop him for that?
That apart, there are at least five players in this Indian squad, including a few in this XI itself, who don't deserve to be in the team, or even on the bench. Many of those dropped are a lot better than those passengers here. A lot of youngsters don't seem cut out for ODIs but somehow make it only because of youth or promise of potential, while two veterans pushing 30 have fantastic stats, but don't seem to be in contention for a place in the team. They need to look back at those cast aside- they can contribute a lot more- and stick to them for a long time.
