NAGPUR, Friday – Sri Lanka threw away a golden chance of piling up a big total after winning the toss and batting first on a surface that didn’t offer much for the bowlers when they were dismissed for 205 on the first day of the second Test against India at the Vidarbha CA Stadium here on Friday.
That Sri Lanka find themselves in this plight is because of the indiscipline of their batsmen who failed to spend time at the wicket and play a decent game of Test cricket. The type of cricket Sri Lanka displayed yesterday showed lack of discipline amongst their batsmen for none of them displayed the patience to stick it out in the middle and make the Indian bowlers work hard for success.
Most of the wickets were gifted and apart from Dimuth Karunaratne and Dinesh Chandimal who made a fifty apiece, none of the other batsmen knuckled down to play a long innings that was required if Sri Lanka was to put up a decent total and give their bowlers the opportunity to attack the Indian batting.
It was only the other day during the Kolkata Test that Angelo Mathews, the most experienced batter in the Lankan line-up said that scoring fifties are not going to win you Test matches. If one is to go by that statement then Sri Lanka can forget about winning this Test.
In the first instance Sri Lanka should have never allowed themselves to be bowled out inside a day. By doing so they have put themselves in danger of leaving India plenty of time to build on a good first innings score and exert pressure on them in the second innings.
Ishant Sharma, the captain of the Delhi team in the Ranji trophy on his return to Test cricket after eight months proved a handful for the Lankan batters as he took the wickets of Sadeera Samarawickrama in his first spell, Karunaratne in his third and Suranga Lakmal to finish with figures of 3 for 37.
Sharma in the first instance would not have played had it not been for a late change that was brought about by Mohammad Shami suffering from a left hip niggle on the morning of the match.
The Indian spinners who went wicketless at Kolkata were very much in the midst of play here with Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja bowling brilliantly to capture seven wickets between them. They forced the batsmen into errors with their consistency and the Lankan batsmen lacking the discipline succumbed to their wiles.
Karunaratne rode his luck to score his 14th Test fifty that also got him past 1000 runs in Tests for the calendar year – the second batsman to do so for 2017 after South African opener Dean Elgar. The last occasion a Sri Lankan batsman scored 1000 Test runs in a calendar year was in 2004 when Kumar Sangakkara, Angelo Mathews and Mahela Jayawardene all hit that mark.
Karunaratne escaped a run out at 14 when Pujara threw the wicket down with a direct hit from mid-on, was missed at 15 by the same fielder in the same position off Ashwin at 15 and, was then stumped off a Jadeja no-ball at 21. Everything happened in the first session which turned out to be a drab affair with Sri Lanka crawling to 47-2 off 27 overs.
Although the run rate picked up in the next session largely due to the 62-run liaison between Karunaratne and Chandimal, wickets also fell at regular intervals. From 151-4 at tea, Sri Lanka’s innings simply crumbled in the final session with the last six wickets falling for 45 runs
Chandimal dug-in amidst the fall of wickets at the other end and looked good enough to carry his team to a competitive total, but after batting 122 balls for 57 he attempted a reverse sweep off Ashwin and was out lbw. This shot which is quite common in T20 and one-day cricket looks impressive when it is played effectively, but dreadful when a batsman gets out to it. During that innings Chandimal completed 3000 Test runs becoming the 12th Sri Lankan to do so.
Lahiru Gamage whose selection for the Test was somewhat in doubt after his poor performance at Kolkata repaid the faith his captain had by retaining him for this Test when he got the initial breakthrough by getting through the defences of Lokesh Rahul for India to end an absorbing day’s cricket at 11-1. India trail Sri Lanka by 194 runs with nine wickets in hand.
Sri Lanka went unchanged for the Test while India made three changes.
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