Hats off to our new T-20 Captain-Coach combination — Suryakumar Yadav and Gautam Gambir for their scripting of their maiden win during the T-20 match against Sri Lanka.

Of course, they should be thankful to the butter-fingered Sri Lankan players, who dropped catches and also leaked boundaries to allow our openers to give a rocking opening stand of 74 runs during the power play.

This foundation allowed our captain and Pant to set a daunting target of 214. Though Rishabh Pant scored 49 runs in 33 balls, often he was found to be struggling to meet the ball with his bat. He lived a cat’s life to score these runs. Still kudos to Sri Lankan openers, who too gave a lightning start to their innings. In fact, the Sri Lankan team was coasting well at the end of the 16th over. Alas, suddenly they lost the plot and gifted away six wickets in a cluster to lose the match by 43 runs.

Thankfully, it was our rookie bowler, Riyan Parag, who proved to be the best bowler. His bowling figure saved Hardik Pandya, who proved to be the culprit. It may be a day off for Pandya and we are sure he would bounce back in the next game.

Incidentally, it seems the advice of Rahul Dravid to his counterpart, Gautam Gambir to “Exhale, take a step back” proved to be useful, as we could see a cool coach in Gautam Gambir, who is normally expressive on the field.

Vinay Mahadevan, Mylapore, Chennai