Indians won Test Series purely on might of their batting.
It is a very well known fact that one dayers are won by batsmen' Test Matches are won by bowlers. Top teams in the world like Australia thrash their opponents with their batsmen piling up good totals for their teams and bowlers ripping through an innings. In the case of a contest between evenly matched teams like England and New Zealand one team scrapes through on the basis of a better all round performance. However the Test Match series between India and Sri Lanka proved to be a rare exception.
Indian batsmen decimated Sri Lankan bowlers to win the series. The series was won purely on the might of Indian batting. Indian batsmen scored 2206 runs in the series at an average of 66.85. The batsman literally overpowered a hapless Muralidharan and Company. The fact that their trump card Muralidharan managed to pick up a mere 9 wickets conceding65.66 runs per wicket is an indicator as to how dominant Indian batsmen were in the series. In fact the other key bowlers of Sri Lankan team were not spared with Ajantha Menids and Rangana Herath averaging 81.00 and 48.81 per wicket.
Sri Lankan batsman hardly did anything wrong as they averaged 417 runs per innings in the series which is exceptional by any standards. Sri Lankan batsman played attacking cricket and got their runs at a run rate in excess of 3.50 runs per over. However Sri Lanka must consider themselves unlucky that they lost the series inspiteof putting up big totals as their bowlers ran into Indian batsmen who were on a rampage averaging 670 runs per innings at an run rate in excess of 4 per over. The difference in batting made the difference. India were always attacking and piling up huge totals. In the first Test when India were 4 down for 30 odd, they still counter attacked and scored 426 and the runs came at a fast pace in excess of 4 per over. The fact that Indias lowest score in the series is 426 speaks a lot about the domination of their batsmen in the series. The lowest total put up by Indian batsmen in an innings exceeded the average total put up by Sri Lanka batsmen and that is what was the decisive factor in the end.
Indians fared very poorly on the bowling front conceding as many as 1960 runs to pick up 45 wickets which is excluding 2 run outs. The bowlers on an average conceded 43.56 runs to pick up a wicket. Their trump cards Ishant Sharma, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan averaged 67.50, 41.00 and 36.50 runs for a wicket which is poor by international standards. Inspite of a poor effort on part of our strike bowlers, India still manged to convincingly beat Sri Lanka speaks a lot on the batting might India have at their disposal.
The key to Indias win in the series was set up by Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the first innings of the first Test with their counter attacking centuries and by centuries from Gautam Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar in the second innings of the first test as India under pressure on both occassions. In the first instance Inndia were under pressure to put up a reasonable total and second instance to save the match and India manged to achieve both to perfection. This series will always be remembered for many years to come because it is probably the first time ever in the history of cricket that a team has won a test series purely on the might of their batting.
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