COLOMBO: 

Man in form: (Right) Suresh Raina; Leading by example: (Left) Mahendra Singh Dhoni. PICS/AP, AFP

Before the series they had been referred to as the M Factor a spinning web of mystery and mastery. Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan were Sri Lanka's gameplan for success in this five-match ODI series.

But suddenly the strategy switched. Last Sunday, Suresh Raina and India skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni arrived with their own tactical design to unravel the so-called riddle that had India's batsmen largely bewitched, bothered and bewildered during the Test series.

Slow wicket

At Premadasa Stadium yesterday, the India combination took the pair by the scruff of its so-called 'mystery neck' and made them appear as would everyday club bowlers.

You do not need to look into a crystal ball to unravel the box of tricks or even the so-called web. For a start, the slower pitch conditions blunted the pace at which Mendis bowls; the ball doesn't skid through or turn that sharply and when bowling around the wicket, his angle is often awry.

Bothered

Murali, possibly bothered by the success Mendis is having, has been darting in his deliveries and the result is giving away runs as the batsmen get hold of his loose deliveries.

And, as they did on Sunday, the Indian pair having found their measure of the attack yesterday, began to control the pace of the innings.

But as in any partnership as this, and in the cauldron of the ODI arena, century partnerships are as rare as genuine gold dust. The ability to carve up an attack and to an extent take a bowler out of the attack shows that the mystery is history.

And, in reality, the so-called 'mystery ball' is in fact, nothing more than a duplicate of the authentic Jack Iverson finger flick used in the early 1950s.

Not only did Dhoni and Raina engineer their partnership of 143 to perfection, their organised batting made bowling look very easy.

It wasn't a case of Virender-Sehwag-style-battering during the double century in Galle, but deft strokeplay combined with a lot of smart, streetwise batting. And as it turned out, their association set the stage for India to clinch the five-match Idea Cup series with one match still to go.

The pair came together in the 18th over and as they rotated the strike and organised their tactics, their scores of 71 for Dhoni and 76 for Raina, squeezed the life out of the spinning charm, which somehow has lost its ability to cast a magic spell.