Ajinkya Rahane and Shikhar Dhawan for the rest of the match, Sri Lanka were left chasing a runaway engine, delivered a staggering mid-innings explosion that yielded 96 runs in eight overs. India continued to hurtle ahead, hitting 363 for 5 after Rahane and Dhawan had hit hundreds, before Sri Lanka's chase began to run out of steam inside the first 20 overs. Ishant Sharma's 4 for 34 hastened the end, as he made excellent use of the bounce on the Cuttack pitch as well as the seam on offer.
The pre-series talk of Sri Lanka having arrived underprepared, as they were defeated by 169 runs and wielding a green attack, proved startlingly accurate. The Dhawan-Rahane partnership had produced 37 more runs than the 194 Sri Lanka managed in their whole innings.
Suraj Randiv's first ODI in three year's had been going okay until his third over - the 21st of the innings. and although he had fulfilled his own prophecy by dropping one catch each off Dhawan and Rahane, Sri Lanka had managed to keep India in check,
Kumar Sangakkara had been among the first to suggest Sri Lanka would head into this series underdone, conceding only 90 from the first 20 overs.
Rahane reached his fifty with a single off the second ball of that Randiv over, before Dhawan took strike and embarked on the first bona-fide charge of the innings. He paddle-swept Randiv fine for four first, then reverse-paddled him for an almost symmetrical boundary, before running at the bowler to crash him over long on, to bring up his own half-century. That was the moment the engine de-coupled and set off at the breakneck speed, on its own. The scoring barely eased from there, and even then, not until these two had been separated.
Dhawan was powerful in the arc between midwicket and cover, bullying even the decent balls to the fence, while Rahane, operating with a little more finesse, moving around the crease to manipulate the angles, playing that delicious inside-out shot particularly well. They took the batting Powerplay in the 24th over, and could hardly have used it more effectively. Gamage was cracked for 15 in one over, with the field pulled in, and Mathews walloped for 18.
The hitting from both batsmen was so clean and so precise that at 186 for 0 after 28 overs, a score in excess of 400 seemed a distinct possibility. Seeing that both men were hitting well down the ground, the Sri Lanka bowlers attempted to pull back their lengths, but the openers would simply make room and flat-bat the short balls back over the bowler - thoroughly unfussed, casually arrogant.
Mathews tapped each of his eight bowling resources during the carnage, but no bowler seemed capable of clotting up the run hemorrhage, much less present a menace to India. The bowling was more uninspired than indisciplined. The quicks were short of variation, the spinners unable to deceive, and the medium-paced all rounder turned out to be fodder on one of the flattest batting tracks Sri Lanka have played on this year.
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