Dhoni on the verge to be banned

Dominica: Team India have a 'Save Dhoni' campaign ahead of them if they want to pre-empt a ban on their skipper in the Lord's Test against England, beginning July 21.

Dhoni must not have his team turn up slow on the over-rate in the third Test against the West Indies here from Wednesday, for it would incur an immediate ban of one Test match on him.

The Indian team follow their Caribbean odyssey with a star-billed series in England this summer and if Dhoni's team is not alert, it could make him sit out in the Lord's Test.

Dhoni has already been twice guilty of breaching ICC Code of Conduct, rule 2.5, which states that a captain who is pulled up for three offences of slow over-rates in a 12-month period, would suffer an automatic ban in the next match of the same format.

Dhoni and his men were deemed to have bowled three overs short during the recently-concluded Barbados Test, which was the second such offence in 2011, following a similar breach of rules in the Cape Town Test against South Africa earlier this year.

The onus is now on India's three premier bowlers to avert such a fate befalling their skipper.

Ishant Sharma is in fantastic form with a 10-wicket haul in the drawn Barbados Test but he takes unusually long time to finish up his overs.

"Ishant takes a long time to return to his bowling crease and it sometimes stretches his over to seven minutes," said an insider from the Barbados Test.

The case with Praveen Kumar is a little different.

Praveen does return to his bowling mark briskly but he has the habit of standing and looking at the batsman, after a delivery has passed the bat and gone to the wicketkeeper.

Even Harbhajan Singh, though a spinner, is not much of a help in making up for slow overs.

"If he bowls 20 overs in a day, you would still find the slow over-rate hasn't improved by much."

To be fair to Harbhajan, he got to bowl only 14 and 19 overs from the two innings in the Barbados Test.

In contrast, Ishant and Praveen bowled the bulk of the overs - 42 for the former and 39 for the latter - which makes it 81 overs bowled from the 145 overs in two West Indies' innings.

"Bowlers like Glenn McGrath, if you remember, used to wear a watch on their wrist while bowling," said the source.

"To be fair, it is not easy for a genuine fast bowler to finish his overs in time. Teams which have had Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar usually struggle to keep up with the over-rates."

In the Barbados Test, Dhoni knew all along that he was behind the required rate in a stipulated time but even he was guilty of not rushing up the matter.

Dhoni, being an innovative captain, keeps shuffling his fielders constantly and it doesn't help in finishing the overs in time.

He did try getting Suresh Raina to bowl his off-spinners on the last afternoon in a bid to speed up the rate but it only marginally helped the matter.

Thus, Indian bowlers are required to win the Dominica Test and win the three-Test series but if it comes at the cost of a ban on their skipper, they would have paid a heavy cost for their efforts.

ENGLAND VS SRILANKA 3rd ODI HIGHLIGHTS

London: Dinesh Chandimal's swashbuckling century anchored Sri Lanka to a convincing six-wicket win in the third one-day international at Lord's on Sunday, as England captain Alastair Cook's career-best knock of 119 proved in vain.

Cook gave the hosts a fighting chance by grafting his way to a second ODI century in a total of 246-7 but the 21-year-old Chandimal's 105 not out helped Sri Lanka chase down the target, finishing on 249-4 with 10 balls to spare.

Opener Mahela Jayawardene — building on his near-flawless 144 in the tourists' series-leveling win at Headingley on Friday — weighed in with an assured 79 at more than a run a ball.

Sri Lanka moved 2-1 ahead in the five-match series, with the fourth ODI at Nottingham on Wednesday.

In farcical scenes late on, Angelo Mathews went on the defensive and often refused runscoring opportunities to allow Chandimal to complete his second ODI century. The tactics angered captain Tillakaratne Dilshan, sitting on the balcony outside the dressing rooms, and left the crowd bemused.

Chandimal eventually passed the milestone two balls into the 48th over, with a massive six over the mid-on boundary, and grabbed the winning runs with a four through extra cover. He had been just as brutal early on, slashing and swotting wayward deliveries to the rope and surviving a fierce early spell by Stuart Broad.

Chandimal, who passed 50 for the second time in ODIs, had 11 fours and two sixes in his 126-ball knock.

Dilshan was bowled by Tim Bresnan for 3 at the start of the Sri Lankans' chase but a second-wicket stand of 112 between Jayawardene and Chandimal put them back in command on a flat wicket in increasingly overcast conditions.

Jayawardene's innings was typically cultured, an exquisite extra-cover drive for four off Bresnan in the sixth over — arguably the shot of the day— which was one of nine boundaries he struck.

He fell to the expensive Jade Dernbach while Kumar Sangakkara (25) and Thilina Kandamby (11) were the other men out for the tourists. Mathews finished on 1 not out off 21 balls.

Cook had earlier underpinned England's 246-7 with a gritty century, made against the backdrop of a regular smattering of falling wickets at the other end.

Kevin Pietersen contributed a quickfire 41 before falling to legspinner Jeevan Mendis for the third straight time this series and when limited-overs star Eoin Morgan departed for 5, less than two overs later, England was struggling at 85-4 after 22 overs.

Partnerships of 72 (Cook-Ian Bell) for the fifth wicket and 75 (Cook-Bresnan) for the sixth revived the hosts, who stuttered to a total that was always going to be tough to defend given the benign batting surface at Lord's.

It was Cook's first century since 2007 — when he made 102 against India — and was a good response to the critics who believe his measured style of batting is not suited to ODIs.

His patient knock, which included 13 fours, may have come off 143 balls but it was crucial in the context of the innings, which started off poorly when Craig Kieswetter (3) and Jonathan Trott (2) perished cheaply to pile early pressure on Cook.

England would have been in even more trouble had Jayawardene not dropped Cook when he was on 15. The captain — who passed the 1,000-run mark in his 29th ODI — was eventually dismissed with seven balls left in the innings, run out by wicketkeeper Sangakkara after attempting a cheeky single from the non-striker's end.

A Sri Lankan victory at Trent Bridge on Wednesday will clinch the series.

Teams:

England: Craig Kieswetter (wk), Alastair Cook (c), Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan, Ian Bell, Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Jade Dernbach.

Sri Lanka: Tillakaratne Dilshan (c), Mahela Jayawardene, Dinesh Chandimal, Kumar Sangakkara (wk), Thilina Kandamby, Angelo Mathews, Jeevan Mendis, Nuwan Kulasekera, Suranga Lakmal, Suraj Randiv, Lasith Malinga.