Sri Lanka vs. India, Day Two

It was Sri Lanka's day at the Sinhalese Sports Club today. At 422/4 they hold the upper hand in this game. It is fast approaching a stage where only Sri Lanka can realistically push for a victory.

The wicket is quite slow at the moment, but Muralitharan will extract much more turn off the wicket than Kumble and Harbhajan.The referral farce was played out again in the dying minutes of the day. This time it basically amounted to Harbhajan Singh and Dinesh Karthik's judgment (from extremely poor positions) against Mark Benson's.

It's a terrible idea, and gets worse with time, mainly because it is structurally flawed. I have posted more detailed assessments of the Referral system here and here.

India failed to make a breakthrough in the morning session, and that seemed to seal their fate for the rest of the day. The Indian bowling had an element of predictability about it.

Teams all over the world have basically figured out how to play Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh now. Unless there is something exceptional in the wicket, or the batsmen become overly ambitious, or Kumble and Harbhajan bowl exceptionally well and have a lucky day where great catches are held and every good appeal is upheld, they are not going to run through lineups on good wickets.

The slow wicket negated Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan even though both toiled manfully. If any criticism at all may be offered of either, it would be that they tried too many things too often.

I wonder how Sri Lanka would have responded had Zaheer or Ishant bowled outside offstump on a bloody minded good length to an 8-1 field or a 7-2 field and basically ignored the stumps? A drop in the run rate might have brought about an interesting situation.

As it happened, Sri Lanka made 2/337 from 98 overs on the day. The absence of a fifth bowler hurt India.

Weather permitting, Sri Lanka should have enough time to win. Before this game, they have made 400 or more batting first in a Test Match in Sri Lanka 10 times, and won seven of those games. They have never lost a Test Match at home after making 400 or more batting first.

Of the three drawn games, two were severely affected by rain.

Indias' batsmen have their work cut out for them.