Colombo Aug 25 Ever since they were shown off the doors at the ICC World Cup last year in the Caribbean soil, India have progressed nicely in the shorter version of the game under new captain M.S. Dhoni. The grand win against Sri Lanka, the runners-up of the World Cup tournament is a fine example for that.

Under the captaincy of Dhoni, India grabbed the inaugural ICC Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa last year and won the Commonwealth Bank tri-nation ODI competition in Australia that involved the World Champions and Sri Lanka. This was a good sign of India’s come back to glorious days of cricket.

A victory here for the tourists, without two of their big sharks Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag will be hailed and yet another close contest is expected at the R. Premadasa Stadium Tuesday.

After the defeat to the Sri Lankans in the first ODI by eight wickets in Dambulla, the tourists did well and made a grand come back and won the next two ODIs by three wickets and 33 runs respectively.

A win either in Tuesday’s or Friday’s day-nighter will give the Indians the series.

‘We’ll take it game by game. We want to give 100 percent and play the first game well and if there are any mistakes there, we want to come back, rectify them and finish off the series in a winning note,’ Dhoni told the pressmen in Colombo.

‘We won thanks to a good team effort and that’s good to see. Not a single player had a bad game and hopefully that continues,’ he added.

The Sri Lankans, meanwhile, rather belatedly, will bring in one of the regular openers to the side, pushing down Kumar Sangakkara to his original number three slot.

Going by Sangakkara’s excellent form during the Asia Cup tournament, where he hit three successive hundreds opening the innings, the Sri Lankans let him partner Sanath Jayasuriya. But the wicketkeeper batsman has struggled against Zaheer Khan in this series.

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