‘He’s just bullied the bowling today.’

Those were Harsha Bhogle’s words when Shikhar Dhawan lifted first his bat and then his arms in the now familiar two-two pose. Without any negative connotation, Bhogle was right. In Dambulla, just as it was the case in Galle, Colombo and Pallekele in Tests, Dhawan treated the Sri Lankan bowlers with disdain. There was no respect on offer to Lasith Malinga, playing in his 200th One Day International. There was no respite for the debutant Vishwa Fernando. There was no time for Upul Tharanga to devise a plan or lay out a trap. In the blink of an eye, Dhawan ran away with the chase. This was Dhawan beating Sri Lanka into submission.

With Dhawan, though, there are always caveats. We have seen this before from him. We have seen him destroy ordinary bowling attacks on good batting surfaces. When he gets going, when he starts connecting with his cover drives and the cut shots that speed away to the boundary, he is a hard man to stop. And Sri Lanka have found that out repeatedly in this series.

On Sunday night, it was no different. From a 36-ball fifty to a 71-ball hundred – the fastest of his career – Dhawan did not think of this as a chance to ease himself into the eleven. This was not just about scoring runs for him, this was about scoring the way that would make his name the first to appear on the teamsheet after the undroppable Virat Kohli.

Contrast this with the way Ajinkya Rahane accumulated all those runs in the West Indies in the recent ODI series. He walked away with the man of the series trophy but there was a general acknowledgement that it would not help his case for a permanent slot in the lineup. Dhawan, on the other hand, ever since his comeback in the Champions Trophy, has made runs with authority. And when he scores runs like water flows in a rapid, he is a genuine match-winner.

With Dhawan, the problem has been consistency. His ability to destroy opposition bowling attack has never been in question, it’s the frequency with which he could do it. With a pedestrian bowling attack on easy pitches, Dhawan’s rich vein of form will come with an asterisk and fine print that reads “conditions apply.” There’s always a feeling that a slump is just around the corner, waiting to rear its ugly head.

“Well I have already had a slump so I don’t think about it,” Dhawan said after the match. “When it has to come it will come. When it doesn’t come… I really don’t think. I embrace that period also. When I was not doing well I was just focussing on my processes. And when I am doing well, I am still focussing on my processes. So those things don’t bother me that much. I feel failure teaches you a lot. and I am lucky I have learnt so much out of that.”

And not for the first time on this tour, Dhawan showed that he is playing with a clear head. There is a certain element of “enjoy-it-while-it-lasts” feel to the way he is approaching his innings. It might border on bullying, but you can only beat what’s in front of you and Dhawan is doing just that. With the knowledge that there is more than a healthy competition for the opener’s slot, coupled with the fact that he won’t get as long a rope as he used to in the past, Dhawan is making the most of his form. That’s a realisation that has dawned on him – that he can’t afford slip-ups.

“It was always there. But now we have got good players. If one goes, there is another player so we can afford those things,” said Dhawan. “So its always a balance of everything If we don’t have good players in our backup so we know that okay we can cover it a little bit so we know now we have that so why not put more responsibility on the players so we can come up and do the job for the team.”

“The last three months have been a great time for Shikhar,” Kohli said after the match. The good thing is that he is capitalising on his purple patch. He can win you games with the way he bats and we would be looking to keep him in that zone for as long as we can.”

When he is in that zone, Dhawan is as potent a weapon as any in this Indian lineup.

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