India fielding coach R Sridhar has said that the team will not be deterred by the middle-order collapse in the second One-day International against Sri Lanka, and will continue with batting experiments in the matches to come. India lead the five-match series 2-0 with the third ODI to be played at Pallekele on Sunday.

“The way we look at every game is that we take something into the next game and the remaining part of the series. I think the way the last game shaped up was a wonderful learning curve for us,” Sridhar said. “Even before the series started, we all knew that there was going to be some experiments from us going ahead over the next 18 months. It has been a great learning,” he added.

India recovered from a precarious 131/7 to record only their second win at the Pallekele International Cricket ground on Thursday.

“Akila Dananjaya bowled brilliantly in the last game. We take that forward, and we’ll make sure we won’t repeat the same mistakes going forward. We wanted give the other players a hit because Rahul hadn’t batted in the middle in a one-day game so we wanted to give him that opportunity. It was just an experiment. [But] It won’t stop,” the 47-year-old said.

“We will try out different players in different slots to get the best exposure to get the best out of each player. That’s the endeavour of the team management,” he added.

Pandya available for selection

Sridhar outlined that Hardik Pandya has recovered sufficiently from cramps and is available for selection for the next game.“On Thursday, Hardik Pandya was cramping. He’s perfectly alright now. He should be ready for the next game,” Sridhar said.

Along with fitness as a prime parameter, India also aim to be the best fielding unit on the field, as skipper Virat Kohli had put it before the second ODI. As such, Sridhar’s task in this long limited-overs’ schedule as well as in the build-up to the 2019 ODI World Cup is cut out.

“There is no dearth of motivation as far as the players here are concerned because the biggest motivation is that they are representing the country. As far as differing fielding drills: it all depends on the workload. If someone is playing five or eight games on the trot, we are very careful.

We design drills and the loading of the fielding drills is very much tune with that. For somebody who is not playing, the workload is a bit more. That is something we monitor very closely, reason being we want them to be at their best whenever we take the ground,” he said.

Sridhar seemed satisfied with the improvements in ground fielding. “Compared to the Test side, I think our ground fielding has improved significantly over the last three or four years. We have affected probably the most number of run-outs in Test cricket over the last few years. I think we have one of the best fielding sides in the world at the moment,” he added.

India and Sri Lanka face off in the third ODI at Pallekele on Sunday. A win would help the visitors pocket the series.