India’s stand-in skipper Sehwag already expressed happiness — not at the pitch, but at the fact that it wouldn’t matter. “We wanted to win the game and finish the series off in Kolkata as I am not sure of the wicket in Delhi,” Sehwag said on Thursday night after India beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets in the fourth ODI to take an unassailable 3-1 lead in the series.

The pitch here had come under severe scrutiny during the Champions League T20, with skippers from various teams saying it was far from being ideal, given the low scores.

Delhi’s home matches in this season’s Ranji Trophy were moved to the Roshanara ground in the Capital as a result of speculation over an underdone track.

In October, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh steered India to a six-wicket win over Australia on a pitch that looked alarmingly scruffed up towards the end.

And Daljit Singh, the chief of BCCI’s pitches and grounds committee, said it would be hard to serve up anything too different from the slow, low tracks of the recent past. “Everybody knows the pitch was relaid with an eye on the 2011 World Cup. You can’t produce pitches overnight, these things take time. For the first year, this pitch will play slow and low and it’ll get better as more matches are played,” he said on Friday. “But I am expecting a competitive game here as the outfield is good and we have left grass on the pitch,” he added, without dwelling on the number of runs expected from the track.

The Kotla pitch was dug up in April this year and work to improve its bounce has been going on since. On Thursday evening, DDCA’s pitch committee convenor Vijay Bahadur Mishra got a few net bowlers to bowl on the track that will be used in order to judge the bounce.

“It is a 250-run track, which is more than what was scored during the Australia ODI,” Mishra said.

Injuries played a part: Sangakkara

Kolkata: Sri Lankan skipper Kumar Sangakkara insisted that India were a “beatable” side despite having lost both the Test and one-day series here. India overcame Sri Lanka 2-0 in the Test series to jump to the top of the Test rankings, and have already sealed the one-day series by taking an unassailable 3-1 lead.

While the Sri Lankan skipper praised Dhoni’s team, he blamed their defeats on losing key performers at various times during the tour. Sri Lanka lost at least five key players at different stages of the trip.

“It’s always tough to make changes 10 minutes before the toss. Especially when he is your best bowler. First Test, half an hour into the start of the game, we lost Thilan Thushara. Murali (Muttiah Muralitharan) is gone, Angelo Mathews was a huge blow, while (Chanaka) Welegedara had a groin injury and sat out in the Eden one-dayer,” Sangakkara said.

He said he was pleased, despite the losses, that they had fought well.