In hindsight

Ok, first without hindsight. What did India do wrong going into the game. Nothing. The combination was almost right. All bowlers, except Zaheer, looked in decent rhythm. So Balaji took his place. Ganguly came in for Yuv, quite ok, seemed to be an automatic solution for opening problems. Laxman in place of Rao, not much to choose, not knowing Laxman's current form. And not choosing Kumble again, well the three seamers seemed to be doing the job well, so ?

Now, with hindsight, what could have been different ? This is easy, Ganguly could have gone on for a few more overs, since he was accelerating. Got India those additional 20-30 runs (well, who knows if Pathan would have got the chance to plunder, in that case), Dhoni could have learnt from his mistakes and stayed at the wicket, Dravid could have got an frontline pacer to break Jayawardane - Chandana partnership. Sure, lots of these in hindsight, but nothing which should have been different at the start of the game.

One thing we do know for sure is the terrible form of their part-timers. Ganguly should not be judged too much in his first match, but Sehwag and Raina seem to be under-confident. Sehwag in particular is missing the simple trick of bowling tight, something that was his specialty until last season. India seems to be taking a big risk with the fifth bowler, without extra fall-back options of Sachin, Yuv, Mongia. And the risk multiplies in case one of the frontline bowlers has an off day (like Harbhajan had, surely that's normal. Do we know Kumble to be a miracle worker, and that too against SL ?)

So, what did we learn from today (if this was another experiment). Again, not much. Maybe that Dhoni still has a long way to go before he secures his place in the ODI side (both in batting and keeping).

Maybe Jayawardane played too well. Maybe we don't panic, and continue building.