Couldn't connect, we lost our players during Indian Premier League: Coach

The Indian team arrived in London two weeks ago, punch drunk on success and the confidence that comes with it. Riding on 39 days of manic Indian Premier League action, they were the men in form, the side that had figured this format out. So what went wrong for Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team? Bad form? Bad planning? Bad luck?

Coach Gary Kirsten had one answer today: the IPL.

He was quite clear that the scheduling of the IPL, squeezed in between the New Zealand tour and the world Twenty20 championships, had a lot to do with the team’s disappointing showing. “We came into a tournament without being able to connect with the players at all. We got two days with the players,” Kirsten said this evening.

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Armyman, Tamil icon on field, war-torn Lanka plays cricket

From his hotel room in Colombo, Ajantha Mendis can see the cannons placed single-file by the sea in preparation for Sri Lanka’s 61st independence day celebrations. The artillery regiment to which the spinner belongs will participate in the parade in the capital on Wednesday.

As his brothers-in-arms rehearse their left-right-left steps to beating drums in the street below, the army gunner quietly goes through a meal of polroti, porridge and baked beans. The parade, to be held the day after his team’s do-or-die third game against the Indians, will be a show of strength for the army and Mendis’s regiment — some of whose units are currently pushing ahead in an intense final operation against the LTTE in the north.

If Mendis feels any emotion, it does not show. “My job is to play cricket right now, to bowl well,” he says simply.

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