Wright: The first evening was crucial

Indian coach John Wright singled out the happenings on the first evening as the turning point in the first Test against Sri Lanka which India lost by 10 wickets early Friday morning. "Those couple of late wickets in the first evening were crucial. That took the game away from us. We should have at least put up 250 which would have been a competitive score," said the New Zealand born Wright who is with the Indian side on a one-year contract.

Wright praised the Sri Lankan attack, "It's a balanced attack and their bowlers bowled well right from the start to make things difficult for us."

The Indian bowlers, for their part, though failed to deliver the goods when the Lankans were batting. "It makes things difficult for the captain when you've got the best square cutter in the middle and the bowlers keep on feeding him in his favourite area, " Wright observed.

But he was hopeful that the side would bounce back in Kandy. "We have been in situations such as this before and we got to fight our way back." He though admitted that restoring parity was not going to be an easy task for his team. "Sri Lanka are a difficult side to beat."

Muttiah Muralitharan once again was the wrecker-in-chief with a fivewicket haul in the Indian second innings. He claimed eight in the match.

Wright says his batsmen have to be more positive in handling the Sri Lankan off-spinner. "They have to play their natural game and back themselves. But I don't think that there's any secret formula to play Muralitharan. You can't say you got to play this way. You got to be positive against everyone and not to be intimidated by his reputation."

However Indian captain Sourav Ganguly took a different view on the subject, "Lot of players in this squad with the exception of me and Rahul are facing him for the first time. So they've got no experience on how to handle him"

Ganguly also paid tribute to the Sri Lankan team, "The Sri Lankans played really well. They came up with a good all round performance." Ganguly, like Wright before him, blamed the batsmen for coming up with a pathetic performance, "After that opening partnership between Ramesh and Das we just didn't bat well. The middle order failed and 187 was never going to be enough"

The skipper himself was dismissed by fast bowler Dilhara Fernando on two occasions in this game as his poor form with the bat continued. "I have to score runs. I have scored four hundreds previously against this side. I am making mistakes and getting out. I got a bad decision in the first innings. I got a bad decision in the first Test in Zimbabwe too. But this is part and parcel of game. I have been trying to do everything and I just need to spend sometime in the middle."