da 888： Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly today praised his fast bowlersfor the discipline they showed in the second Test but said somethingneeded to be done about their seeming inability to polish off thetail
26-Aug-2001Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly today praised his fast bowlersfor the discipline they showed in the second Test but said somethingneeded to be done about their seeming inability to polish off thetail. “I think it is creating a bit of a problem for us. We will tryto do something about this (in the third Test) in Colombo,” he saidreferring to Muthiah Muralitharan’s blistering knock of 67 whichenabled Sri Lanka to fight back from 157 for nine to 221 in theirsecond innings.Ganguly rated his own match-winning knock of 98 as one of the betterones and said his prolonged poor run with the bat had been hurtinghim. “I think it is one of my better Test knocks because it helpedIndia win,” Ganguly said referring to his brilliant knock which toolIndia to a seven-wicket win in the second Test against Sri Lanka.Ganguly, who had gone without a half-century in the last 13 innings ina frustrating poor trot, finally got his act together and played abrilliant innings yesterday. “The lack of runs was very upsetting,especially since I am the captain,” he said. Ganguly’s scintillatingknock was blemished by two dropped catches but the Indian captain feltit was only justified as he has had a number of hard decisions in therecent past. “It’s all equal now.”Meanwhile, Sri Lankan captain Sanath Jayasuriya refused to accept thatKandy was a jinxed venue for his team which has lost the last threematches on this ground. Every time they have squandered a 1-0 leadtaken in Galle. “We can’t complain about this venue. Just because weare not playing well, we can’t put the blame on the venue,” he said.Jayasuriya insisted that it was below-par performance by the batsmenthat let the team down. “This is bound to happen if the batsmen arenot performing. We got a lead of 42 runs in the first innings and thenthrew it away,” said the captain who himself failed to impress scoringthree and six in the two innings.He said the turning point of the match was when Sri Lanka lost fourwickets in the opening session on the third day and hoped that in thedeciding Test in Colombo, his team would come up with a performancesimilar to the one in the first Test in Galle. “We have to playpositive cricket in Colombo, like we did in Galle. The batsmen have abig responsibility,” he concluded.