Ashwin, Jadeja star in India's 304-run win
This wasn’t a typical spinning, spitting, gripping surface at Galle International Stadium, so to prise out even the eight wickets needed for victory would take some effort from the Indian bowlers. Putting the day-four surface in perspective, for large periods of play on Saturday (July 29), Sri Lanka appeared primed to at least push the first Test into the final day, until R Ashwin broke the resistance in the final session.
India went some way towards purging the bitter memory of its 63-run defeat at the same venue two years back by swatting Sri Lanka aside by 304 runs, thus snatching a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Sri Lanka was handicapped early in the match by the injury to Asela Gunaratne, and ended the game with only nine fit men after a bruised left middle finger prevented Rangana Herath too from batting in the second innings.
Virat Kohli’s 17th Test century, a beautifully crafted innings that came at a very rapid clip despite no obvious attempt at acceleration, had allowed India to declare 30 minutes into the fourth morning at 240 for 3, giving it an overall lead of 549. Sri Lanka had mounted a record chase some ten days back in the one-off Test against Zimbabwe when it scaled down 388, its highest successful fourth-innings assault. It needed to do a lot better if it was to top that, but against a superior Indian attack and without its full complement of batsmen, it was always a question of when rather than whether.
Sri Lanka didn’t go down with a fight. Dimuth Karunaratne held the innings together with a patient 97, though it was his dismissal, bowled off the inside-edge trying to slog-sweep Ashwin, that set the cat among the pigeons. Kusal Mendis provided an all-too-brief glimpse of his immense potential and Niroshan Dickwella acquitted himself beautifully, but Sri Lanka needed more than one batsman to play out of their skins to even think of making a fist of it, and that wasn’t to be.
Its final tally of 245 all out was disappointing any which you one looked at it, given that there were no demons whatsoever on the Galle strip. Whatever happened off the track even late on day four was slow; hardly a ball misbehaved, and even when there was some deviation off the surface for Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, the batsmen had enough time to play the ball of the surface even if they didn’t pick it off the hand.
As has become customary these days, the early breakthroughs were provided by Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav in their first spells. India didn’t over-attack, knowing that for all the runs at its behest, this wasn’t a surface where you could blast the opposition out. The key was patience, accuracy, discipline and the ability to move in for the kill when an opening presented itself. India ticked all these boxes wonderfully well, never losing intensity or focus even when Karunaratne and Dickwella were in the middle of a face-saving 101-run stand for the fifth wicket.
Kohli uncharacteristically spilled Upul Tharanga at second slip in the first over, as easy a slip catch as you can expect, but it hardly mattered as Shami struck in the same over with a brilliant delivery from round the stumps that got big on the left-hand batsman and kept following him. Cramped for room, all Tharanga managed was a chop on to his sticks, and India was up and running.
Karunaratne punished the slightest profligacy in length or direction, but he soon lost Danushka Gunathilaka, the debutant whipping Umesh straight to Cheteshwar Pujara just to the right of the square-leg umpire. The writing was on the wall at 29 for 2 in the sixth over; the runs were coming freely, but the wickets were tumbling far too regularly for Sri Lanka’s comfort.
Karunaratne and Mendis stemmed the rot for a little over an hour and a half, always on the lookout for runs as they took the scoreboard and the game situation out of the equation. Mendis drove beautifully down the ground and square on the off-side, while Karunaratne was quick to punish anything short outside the off stump as Sri Lanka maintained a healthy rate of scoring. Kohli went from pace to all-out spin by the 16th over, but the third-wicket pair continued on its merry ways until Jadeja got one to turn and bounce to defeat Mendis’s push off the back foot and put Wriddhiman Saha in business.
Angelo Mathews had taken the attack to India in the first innings, and he tried to adopt a similar approach but without getting his eye in. The former skipper charged Jadeja in a bid to hit him over the top down the ground, but only managed a loopy outside edge as the ball turned away from him and flew to point. It was a massive moment, Sri Lanka’s most accomplished batsman dismissed in the most ungainly fashion with so much riding on his shoulders.
Karunaratne was unfazed, finally welcoming the able presence of Dickwella. Ashwin and Jadeja elicited the odd ooh and aah as they spun the ball around the outside edge, but for the most part, they were made to look honest rather than threatening by the circumstances. The runs weren’t cascading but they came in reasonably good time until the sweep was to prove Sri Lanka’s undoing.
Ashwin got one to bounce a little extra to defeat Dickwella’s stroke and get a thick edge through to Saha, his first wicket coming only off his 119th delivery. The offspinner didn’t bowl as well as in the first innings but still was on the money, and the rewards came quickly afterwards when Karunaratne threw away his hand with a century beckoning, and Nuwan Pradeep was caught at leg slip by Kohli off the glove.
Jadeja, who had done the mid-innings damage, rounded off the entertainment by having Lahiru Kumara caught at mid-off, rounding off a game dominated from end to end by Kohli’s men.
Kohli himself had dominated play on Friday which he finished on 76, and he quickly hit his stride on the fourth morning even as Ajinkya Rahane made his intentions clear with a reverse-sweep in the very first over. With declaration on their minds, the skipper and his deputy ran Sri Lanka ragged, and Kohli duly got to three figures before applying the closure. India had added 51 in just 39 deliveries, and might have feared a long toil. Sri Lanka kept it at bay for a while, but the end came with stunning swiftness as it invariably tends to in the subcontinent.