Colombo: With four wickets, Ishant Sharma put Indian on the ascendancy, but Sri Lanka’s lower-order restored some respectability to the score with blusterous stroke-play. At one point, Sri Lanka were 47 for six, with another batsman retired hurt. But debutant Kusal Perera and Rangana Herath added 79 runs for the seventh wicket to stave the follow on before Herath put on another valuable 29 with Tharindu Kaushal. At tea, they were 175 for 8, still trailing by 137 runs.
It was the seamers who orchestrated the collapse. Though they didn’t get much assistance from the surface, unlike on the past two days they purveyed a probing length to keep the batsmen on a tight leash. Ishant, who began with three no balls in his first over, tormented the returning Tharanga all through. He had him flirting at the across-the-off-stump angle. Tharanga was fortunate to see KL Rahul drop him at second slip when he was on zero. But he couldn’t optimize his life, as Ishant later induced another edge, which Rahul held on this time.
Yadav wasn’t exactly disciplined, straying on both sides and bowling shorter than he normally does. But Silva tried to leave a sharp, lifting ball, but it only ricocheted off his bat to disfigure the furniture.
Then Binny exited the dangerous-looking Dinesh Chandimal, who had upper cut and gorgeously driven Binny and Yadav. He was undone by the in-swinger and rapped on the back foot, thought it seemed it had struck him a little too high.
Returning for the second spell, Ishant made the most vital breakthrough of the day, getting rid of Angelo Mathews for just a single. He slanted the ball from wide of the crease, before it held its line to snare an edge off the Sri Lankan skipper. Binny then added to his tally with the wicket of Karunaratne, caught at second slip on the last ball before lunch.
The hosts were further set back when Ishant took out Lahiru Thirimannne. But thereafter, Indian bowlers lost their way in the offset of a blitzy counter-attack by Perera, who scored 55 off just 56 balls. He got ample support from Herath, and later when the former perished, Herath and his understudy Kaushal kept Indians at bay for 29 overs. India had only themselves to blame as Rahul had dropped Kusal when the latter was on nine.
Earlier, India added 20 more runs to their overnight tally with Cheteshwar Pujara becoming only the fourth Indian batsman to carry his bat.