Indian cricketers could be seen doing some heavy last-minute shopping at the Colombo airport duty-free on Saturday, on their way back to India after what had been a rather taxing tour of Sri Lanka.

Blame it on the Beijing Olympics, which coincided with the series, but it didn’t exactly get top-billing over the last three weeks. One other reason could be that the cricket served up lacked the famous Lankan flavour. A closer inspection of the 3-2 scoreline does indicate that the side playing mediocre cricket beat the one that was downright poor, and under the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that India’s first-ever ODI series win in the island nation failed to impress many.

Every single match in the five-ODI series was decided after one of the two sides collapsed— and India only slipped twice. Also, luck played a big role in the results as the side that won the toss invariably won the match.

Low-scoring contests

To count a few positives, this one-day series was distinctly different from what the norm has been of late, at least in the subcontinent: high-scoring games. Not once did the total come in the vicinity of 300 — in fact, the highest score was 247 by India in the fourth one-dayer — and to see small totals defended successfully in this era of slam-bang cricket was heartening. The series belonged entirely to the bowlers even though Mahendra Singh Dhoni walked away with the Man of the Tournament award for his crucial knocks.

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