Unfinished business despite the overkill

So India and Sri Lanka are playing again? Should the world care? Why, every other match of theirs is against each other. And they have played the other in at least five tournaments since saturation point was hit. Don't the players get bored?

When Yuvraj Singh was picked for this Test series, about two weeks after he had been given a wake-up-call drop from the one-day side, India had just finished facing Sri Lanka in their seventh ODI assignment (three of them bilateral series) in two years. The first remark in the story's comments section on Cricinfo had nothing to say about the selectors' choices. "Is it possible for us to play ANY OTHER TEAM OTHER THAN SRI LANKA FOR GOD'S SAKE???????" the reader asked. Soon more readers from both countries joined in, asking for a closure.

The Ashes, the oldest rivalry in cricket, was contested in 2009 in England, will be played in 2010-11 in Australia, and then again in 2013 in England, a cycle it has always followed. The cricket seasons in both countries are not the same, else the Ashes would be a biennial event. At any rate, despite the seasonal idiosyncrasies, there are only two Ashes series every four years.

India, though, went to Sri Lanka in 2008, hosted them in 2009-10, and are going there again in 2010. Two Test series in two years may be an FTP vagary but three in three, to go with countless ODI series, just shows the ICC is irrelevant, and the two boards are inconsiderate towards the fans.

At the end of this tunnel, though, the players involved shine a bright light on at least the coming Test series. When asked if they are not tired of playing Sri Lanka, one of India's team said, "No. Not this time. This time we have things to correct." And there are a few things to correct.

For starters, how can this Indian team claim to be the undisputed best in the world without having won Test series in Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia? They had their chance in 2008 to cross off Sri Lanka, but they were stopped in a series that should fall closely behind India v Australia 2000-01 and Ashes 2005 for consistently gripping Test cricket in the last decade. One of the main themes of Test cricket is redemption - a chance in the second innings. This will be India's second innings: the start of a journey, they will hope, from ICC's No. 1 to the undisputed best.

It is also a second innings for arguably the best middle order of our time. None of India's batting line-ups has perhaps been as devastated by a spin attack as the Fab Four, as it were, was by Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis in 2008. The same middle order sans Sourav Ganguly will be facing a team with the same name, but Murali will leave after the Galle Test, and Mendis, who isn't in the squad for the first Test at least, is not the same bowler anymore. Will the payback, if India do manage it, be just as sweet?

The Indians, however, are not the only ones looking for payback. When Sri Lanka came to India last year they were the No. 2 Test team in the world but the 2-0 defeat in a series, which wasn't even a patch on the first one, exposed them brutally. Freshly reinforced was the fact that they are yet to win a Test match, leave alone a series, in India, South Africa and Australia.

Murali has rarely been beaten into submission by a batsman as he was by Virender Sehwag in Galle and in Mumbai. More than the defeats, it was the hapless nature of it all that would have hurt Sri Lanka. Always dangerous in Sri Lanka, where the hot and humid weather teams up with them, the hosts will have more than just payback on their minds.

The best way to alert the cricket world, a small entity really, about unbalanced schedules is to topple the No. 1 side from its perch. One of the three countries Sri Lanka are yet to win a Test in, South Africa, last hosted them in 2002. This year, the No. 4 side in the world, a team used to making at least the semi-finals of major ICC events, was left without an opponent to host in its home season.

The BCCI, who played an important role in the cancellation of Sri Lanka's tour to England last year, has chipped in and converted its team's one-day tour to a full Test assignment, thus exposing what promised to be a delicious Test rivalry - on the evidence of 2008 - to the same fate as the ODIs between the two teams.

Given the thin bowling line-ups (India don't have Zaheer Khan, and their second spinner is yet to cement his place in the side), this series threatens to revive the not-so-glorious days of the nineties, when one set of these batsmen batted and batted, and the other batted some more. This series is not only a challenge for the bowlers, but also the pitches. The 2000s, with the rise and rise of Murali, gave Sri Lanka the confidence to create result pitches. The contrast was stark: Sri Lanka hosted 20 draws out of 42 before 2000, and only 11 out of 54 since, a result rate behind only that of Australia and South Africa. Will Murali's retirement affect the groundsmen too?

While there is overkill, this is also the contest that has featured the best innings of the last two years - both from Sehwag. Bowling performances from Harbhajan Singh, Mendis, Murali and Sreesanth were among the best in their respective years too. This series will need everything, from weather to bowlers to pitches, to preserve interest in Tests between the two teams. And unlike the limited-over matches, which have perhaps been damaged beyond repair, Tests between India and Sri Lanka still have a lot worth preserving.