Sri Lanka 154 for 5 (Tharanga 64, Mathews 54*, Shami 2-30) trail India 600 (Dhawan 190, Pujara 153, Rahane 57, Pandya 50, Pradeep 6-132) by 446 runs
00:40
Agarkar: India firmly in box seat
Swing, seam, pace and bounce. Dip, drift, turn and bounce. Ingredients that seemed largely absent when India piled on 600, their biggest total in Sri Lanka, haunted the home side’s reply as they ended the second day of the Galle Test five down with the follow-on mark still 247 runs away.
Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami took the top order apart even as Upul Tharanga hurtled along with a profusion of silken off-side boundaries. Then came R Ashwin, going around the wicket to left and right-hander alike, harnessing the sea breeze and testing both edges with drift, swinging arm balls, and the occasional instance of sharp turn. Over the course of an unbroken spell of 18 overs, he gradually discovered the ideal pace and angle of seam to extract the maximum possible help from the Galle pitch and could have easily ended the day with more than one wicket.
Two wickets fell while he was bowling. The first began with his drift and dip beating Tharanga in the air. Having jumped out of his crease and inside-edged into his pad, he turned and hurried back as the ball rolled towards Abhinav Mukund at silly point. Abhinav flicked the ball to the keeper, and when the bails came off, Tharanga’s bat, after a momentary grounding on the dive, had bounced up. A cruel end to an innings of 64 and a 57-run fourth-wicket stand with Mathews.
Then came the wicket of another left-hander, Niroshan Dickwella, who pressed forward but found himself nowhere near the pitch of the ball thanks to Ashwin’s dip. Extra bounce grabbed the shoulder of his jabbing defensive bat, and Mukund, diving right at silly point, took a superb, low one-hander.
Mathews, who struggled initially against Ashwin, on 32 surviving an lbw decision reviewed by India when ball-tracking returned an umpire’s call verdict, slowly grew in assurance, and ended the day batting on 54 with Dilruwan Perera for company. With Asela Gunaratne, who fractured his left thumb on the first day, unlikely to bat, Sri Lanka have quite a task ahead of them.
More to follow…
Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo