Micromax 2010 Asia Cup: Testing waters and making comebacks

This seems to be the theme for nearly every team participating in what is being billed as the battle for supremacy in Asian cricket. For starters, both India and Pakistan have come to this edition of the Asia Cup with players who are finding their feet in international cricket after a brief spell of being rested or dropped, for various reasons. While Pakistan aims to fight its most usual nemesis, i.e. the threat of mutiny in its ranks, India is trying to establish what could be their probable line-up for the forthcoming World Cup. Sri Lanka too are looking beyond the usual players like Jayasuriya who have delivered in the past and the onus could well be on the likes of Malinga, Herath and Angelo Mathews to stake claims not just as potential match-winners but the core of the team that is going to try and bring back the world cup to Sri Lanka. While the persistence with Muralitharan at this juncture seems a bits surprising, it is not secret that Lankans are trying to find a permanent solution to their number five, six and seven slots that seem to have been changed with unwanted regularity in the recent past.

After Test-match glory, India's poor going in T20s is re-surfacing

It might have been largely unnoticed owing to India’s decent ODI status and their extremely improved test rankings, but their showing in the T20s has been on the downslide ever since they became champions at the inaugural T20 World Championship. It is hard to pinpoint the reason for this but it seems that the bowling department isn't able to come good, as there are no seamers who can hit the block-hole with regularity.
It is precisely the same reason, turned opposite, that is working for Pakistan’s success as the current World Champions of T20 and their continued success in this format. With Umar Gul and Mohammed Aamer bowling a good, yorkish length repeatedly and with Ajmal able to fox-out the batsmen, scoring runs against them isn't very easy. Similar is the case with the Lankans, who have Malinga and Kulusekera who generally are adept at bowling tight overs when the batsmen are going crazy. The same cannot be said about India wherein they have more line-and-length bowlers who are also handicapped in terms of bowling some pacey, short-stuff that can curtail the run making.