Friday, August 29, 2008

Udawatte and Mubarak in as SL bat

Dilhara Fernando replaced Chaminda Vaas in the match.

Toss Sri Lanka chose to bat v India

Mahendra Singh Dhoni failed to make it five out five when he lost the toss in the final one-dayer and was asked to field. With the series decided in India's favour, both sides rang in the changes in a match Sri Lanka will want to win for pride, and to maintain their record of not losing four consecutive ODIs at home.

Mahela Jayawardene chose to rest Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas and Tillakaratne Dilshan and brought in Mahela Udawatte, Jehan Mubarak and Dilhara Fernando. Pragyan Ojha and Irfan Pathan got their first games in Colombo, in place of Harbhajan Singh and S Badrinath. Praveen Kumar was replaced by RP Singh, who will play his first match since the Asia Cup in July.

The toss has played a significant role at the Premadasa with the pitch offering movement to the fast bowlers and turn and bounce to the spinners in the evening. So India's young batting order will be tested in the chase.

Sri Lanka's top order has been lacklustre in this series with Jayawardene the only one to aggregate over 100 in the four matches. Sanath Jayasuriya needs 42 runs to surpass Sachin Tendulkar as the highest run-scorer in matches between Sri Lanka and India. He currently has 2525 in 74 matches at an average of 36.59 and strike-rate of 97.

Sri Lanka 1 Sanath Jayasuriya, 2 Malinda Warnapura, 3 Kumar Sangakkara (wk), 4 Mahela Jayawardene (capt), 5 Chamara Kapugedera, 6 Mahela Udawatte, 7 Dilhara Fernando, 8 Nuwan Kulasekara, 9 Thilan Thushara, 10 Ajantha Mendis, 11 Jehan Mubarak.

India1 Gautam Gambhir, 2 Virat Kohli, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), 6 Irfan Pathan, 7 Rohit Sharma, 8 RP Singh, 9 Pragyan Ojha, 10 Zaheer Khan, 11 Munaf Patel.