Three worries

India lost a rain affected match against Sri Lanka yesterday. That, in itself is no cause for worry. India had to lose a match or two in the CB series ( over 11 games, maintaining a clean sheet against the World Champions and the runners up is a huge huge ask). And it is best that we lost a game where we had little control of the variables.

First, no one was quite sure when the game would start and what its length would be. Then, the Indians did not quite figure out how to pace their innings. And when they did reach a competitive score, rains interfered once again - a Twenty over shootout turned the game decisively in Sri Lanka's favor.

That said, India could have done some things better - Sreesanth needs to control his bowling lengths better, India needed to be a little more nimble with their thinking.

But there are 3 concerns that over-ride India's performance and which could have been addressed if India had won yesterday. They are ( in no particular order)

1. Yuvraj Singh's form - 39 runs from 10 innings in Australia is a worry.

2. Lack of batting opportunities for the middle and lower orders - Robin Uthappa on down, the batsmen have had only one hit in the middle in 4 games. While it is a good thing that India has not collapsed spectacularly while batting and hence havent had the opportunity to test their batting, it does not help if half the batting lineup does not get any batting whatsoever during match situations.

3. The bench strength. An India win yesterday could have allowed us to play Raina, Tiwary, Praveen Kumar, Dinesh Karthik and Piyush Chawla over the two games at Adelaide. Instead, India has to now focus on winning the next couple of games to stay in contention - and even if they do, it will be a huge leap of faith to play the bench in the last two games with the finals round the corner (not wanting to disturb a winning combination and all that - something that cost us in the ODI series against England).

Plenty to ponder for India over this week.