India defeated Sri Lanka by five wickets to go 2-1 up in the five match one-day series against Sri Lanka and the star for India in the third match were two left-handers, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina.<\/p>\n
Gambhir made a calculated 102 while Raina made an explosive 65 to give India the lead in the series, says a report in The Times of India<\/strong>.<\/p>\n India were chasing a stiff total of 287 runs and at one time it looked that Sri Lanka will run away with the match, but some decisive stroke-play from Raina and some able support from Irfan Pathan made sure that India achieve the target with two balls to spare.<\/p>\n Raina who was awarded the man-of-the-match award was quoted in The Week <\/strong>saying, \u201c”I learnt over the years, how to bat when you need eight an over, Gautam played very well early on, set the platform. I looked to play straight, not to play cross, I knew I could hit over cover, over mid-wicket, I also wanted to run hard. Credit goes to Gautam, he batted very well.\u201d<\/p>\n Indian captain, MS Dhoni in the post match presentation ceremony said, \u201cWe had a chance, because Gautam was still batting, and we all had belief in Raina, we also had Irfan and Ashwin. I think those two wickets changed the game, Gautam did really well, we needed one of the top three to put in a performance like this.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Sri Lanka suffered a severe blow as their veteran wicket-keeper batsman Kumar Sangakkara injured his hand and will be out of action for a minimum of four weeks, says a report in The Hindu<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This means that Sangakkara will not take part in any of the action against India, Sangakkara was hit on his right hand by a rising Ashok Dinda delivery, he did continued batting after that, but went for the x-rays when he got out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India defeated Sri Lanka by five wickets to go 2-1 up in the five match one-day series against Sri Lanka and the star for India in the third match were two left-handers, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina. Gambhir made a calculated 102 while Raina made an explosive 65 to give India the lead in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers"],"yoast_head":"\n