'India will come back strongly'

Mahela Jayawardene is a cool, unruffled man. A good leader of men, the Lankan believes in leading from the front. On Monday, with the Indians having hit the self-destruct button, he showed the way with a composed, unbeaten half-century to set up the eight-wicket victory.

Having said that, Jayawardene admitted that he was surprised that the Indians keeled over in the manner they did. "When we started the game we didn’t expect it to be like this but I will take it. It’s important that when you start a five-match series you start well. I thought we bowled pretty well in the right areas and kept a lot of pressure on the Indian batsmen and created opportunities," said Jayawardene.

Gauging the conditions well, the Lankan skipper said that the Indians were 80-90 runs short of what could have been a difficult target.

"If they had gotten through that (initial) period and got 225 on the board it would have been a tough score to chase down than this. With the new ball it’s always going to do a bit; these wickets are like that, there’s bit of bounce in it and probably a bit of juice in the first eight overs (or so) and after that there is a bit of seam movement. There was seam movement when we were batting as well. (But) it was a very good one-day wicket."

Going up 1-0 is pleasing but the Lankan believes there is a lot of cricket left in the series and that the Indians are capable of hitting back.

"They will come back strongly. They have a very good side and they have a lot of talented individual players who can change the match for them. So we will make sure we will play the same brand of cricket that we played."