As the celebrations started in Colombo, Sanath Jayasuriya paid homage to his man with the golden arm, Muttiah Muralitharan. The man who bowled Sri Lanka to victory over India in the third Test and, with it, the series. "Murali changed the whole game," said Jayasuriya. "The need was to get them out for less than 250. And the batsmen made maximum use of it."

Muralitharan's insatiable appetite for wickets, 11 for 196 in Colombo, took his series tally to 23 and won him the man of-the-match and man-of-the-series awards. Jayasuriya did admit, however, that losing the toss was beneficial, as he would have done what his opposite number Sourav Ganguly did and chosen to bowl. Ganguly was not offering any excuses for India's loss, despite the injuries to VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar. "They [the Sri Lankans] batted better than us," he said. "They had seven hundreds in the series, we had none. They batted us out of the series." John Wright, the Indian coach, was not impressed by his team's bad judgment in the final innings: "You can't have three run-outs when you are trying to save a match."

Tanya Aldred is assistant editor of Wisden.com

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