India needs to maintain winning momentum overseas: Experts

Mumbai, Aug 11 (UNI) The panelists taking part in a symposium organised here today by Ten Sports along with the Press Club of India saw them put Sri Lanka as the favorites in the upcoming tri-series tournament between India, Sri Lanka and South Africa for the Unitech Cup.

Former cricketers Sanjay Manjrekar who compered the programme, Javagal Srinath, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and senior journalist Ayaz Menon took part in the symposium as a part of Ten Sports build up to the series which will be held from August 14-29 in Sri Lanka.

The panelists felt that with eight months left for the World Cup, it was time the team think tank cut down on the experimentation and decide on the nucleus of the squad required for ther World Cup.

The former leg spinner Sivaramakrishnan felt that it was important to start the new season on a winning note and also felt that it was important that the wickets in Sri Lanka would be the same as those of the West Indies and that would give us more practice on slow and low wickets.

Javagal Srinath said that this was a very important series for India which I would be watching with keen interest. India has not performed well abroad and Chappell so far has not given the results when it came to overseas tourneys. Therefore in a way I think this would be like a second coming for this team if they win in Sri Lanka, he added.

The former Indian spearhead said that this has been the bane of Indian cricket so far, and since 1996 I have not seen India win consistently abroad. It looked like things would change after the 2003 World Cup, but again we could not maintain the consistency and this would be the main challenge for Chappell and the team, he added.

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