As bowling coach of Team India, Prasad has taken them to new heights over the last year, changing strategies from time to time and bringing in new training accessories. The Indian fast-bowling department — Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Praveen Kumar and Irfan Pathan — hadn’t really been put under pressure in the recent past against different batting orders, but the bowlers came under a test on Saturday against Sri Lanka. Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has now won seven matches in a row but he is quick to admit that the second ODI was a close shave.

“I felt that the bowlers were a bit confused about the plan at the death. It’s very important to have a clear mind,” said Dhoni.

Even having a bad plan was better than no plan, he added. “It’s better to have a plan — maybe a bad plan — than to be confused. If you are bowling a bouncer, you don’t need a long-on and a long-off. If you are bowling a slower one, you don’t really need a third man, you can have a deep mid-wicket. At the same time, you can confuse the batsmen and slip in a yorker. But if the ball is completely different than the field, you have a greater risk of giving away a boundary.”

Dhoni is a cool customer as a captain but he says he can get a bit worked up when things don't go according to plan. “When there is pressure on you, you are never cool. You give the opportunity to the bowler, you set the field, when it doesn’t work you sometimes turn from a democratic captain to a autocrat. You become like a king, and you say, ‘this is the field and you bowl according to the field’.

“"But it’s always better to give the first preference to the bowler. With experience, they will get better. If you keep spoon-feeding them, they won’t learn too much.”

In this series, Dhoni has used Ishant as first-change and instead allowed Praveen Kumar and Munaf to take the new ball. “It depends on the third seamer. If Praveen is playing, the best chance for him is with the new ball as he is a swing bowler. Ishant can bowl with a new and slightly older ball as well. In ODIs, you have to combine the fast bowlers so that you become a good bowling attack as a unit. You can’t say we have good new-ball bowlers — if we don’t get a wicket from them, there will be pressure," he says.

Dhoni’s instinct continues to come good, but Saturday’s match, he said, was a timely reminder that you can trip when you’re running too fast.

Yuvraj cleared

Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh was cleared of the charges of showing dissent at an umpiring decision in the second ODI against Sri Lanka. “Yuvraj had been charged under Level 1.3 of the ICC Code of Conduct. But at the resultant hearing, Chris Broad of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees cleared him of the charge,” the ICC said in a statement.