It’s been a long time since India truly went through a Sri Lankan nightmare. The last time around was when the likes of Jayasuriya in his peak form was carting the Indian bowlers into retirement and the crafty Aravinda milked them dry out of anything that flowed through their nipples. Surely Venkatesh Prasad would fully endorse this view.

This time around, Sri Lankan quite easily beat India leaving them with a rather unique trauma of succumbing to spin. Well played Sri Lanka… Mendis or not, there were more positives from the performances of the overall team that quite significantly made them the better of the two teams.

India with its fabulous and highly experienced batting and bowling line-up got kayoed by this team which one can see has just two experienced hands in the batting with Kumar and Jayawardene and two in the bowling with Vaas and Murali. The story is about all their new in-experienced team members that contributed their part at various times to snatch victory for them and also very clearly reflected the failure of the experienced Indian bowling attack to cut through them. The batting may have failed due to the sheer genius attacking duo of Murali and Mendis. But what explains India’s bowling attack that was relatively poo-poed by an inexperienced batting line-up? The word ‘unimaginative’ sums up their performances.

Harbhajan told the media yesterday that it was the exceptional performance from Mendis that did India in and if it was not for him, it would have been a different story. I really wish he keeps his trap shut and learn from Mendis and not talk in a pompous glorification of past quality performances. Not quite long ago, Harbhajan was like Mendis… always attacking the stump with the maximum probability in favour of taking a wicket. Now he is a redundant, mouthing no-brainer with a complete lack of imagination in his bowling, where he is stuck with two idiotic lines of angling the ball outside off-stump or firing it up their pads. Contrary to what Harbhajan and a lot of people feel, India was also terribly let down by their bowling and fielding. Mendis was not just the only difference. How do you explain so many wickets falling to the newbie bowler Prasad, who bowled pretty ordinarily? Was there anything exceptional in his bowling? How can Harbhajan explain how their tail enders piled on this many runs in the end, when the Indian bowlers were in operation? So please cut all the garbage talk of Mendis being the sole difference in the results. Sri lanka was still better than India in “all” departments whether Mendis or not.

As for Mendis, the million dollar question is what if people figure out his release in the near future. Seriously how much of a difference is that going to contribute to? Shane Warne, Murali, Harbhajan and Kumble’s actions are totally figured out and yet they have picked so many wickets so far in their careers. The point is that Mendis will continue to do fabulously well, as long as he continues to bowl in this line and length he showed in this series… always at you, at the stump maximizing his probability of taking a wicket. Irrespective of how you figure out an action, it will always be tough to play him.

The golden question for me is how the rest of the world face up to him in tests and how he handles the pressure of his fame.

As for the famed Indian batting attack, my forks and spoons are not out for them and will wait for the Australian series, if ever the selection policy is to remain as it is today. However I was deeply disappointed with Dravid in this series for the fact that 8 months down the line, he is still succumbing to that incoming delivery either getting bowled or trapped before and shows that the big crack in the wall has not been worked on. For sure he knew he was cornered with very failure, because his second innings had some purpose and grit and it looked like he made a conscious decision to get out of this rut which has stuck on to him for this long. No… not just because he scored some runs but for the manner in which he scored that looked heartening for otherwise yet an another bleak and highly disappointing series for Dravid.

The joke of this series was perhaps on the thought that Mendis was part of the Kolkatta Knight Riders in the IPL. Now I would like to see Sharukh Khan’s dancing gig now!