In a bid to salvage their lost pride in Galle and win the two match series, the Sri Lankan curators had prepared a sporting wicket for the second Test at R. Premadasa Stadium and the talk of the town was that it will heavily favour seam bowling. It all looked so when Sri Lanka boosted their seam attack by adding a fourth seamer in favour of spinner Ajantha Mendis, but it was a spinner who caused most damage on the opening day of the Test yesterday.
Left-arm spinner Rangana Herath bowled with impeccable control and the Bangladeshi batsmen who had been given a false sense of security in Galle due to the docile nature of the track were given a true test on a genuine surface. Herath finished with five for 68 as Bangladesh were bowled out for 240 just before stumps.
Sri Lanka batted for four overs and lost opener Tillakaratne Dilshan for a second ball duck.
Not often teams opt to bowl first in Sri Lankan conditions, but the Sri Lankans did so yesterday expecting the ball to help seam bowling. It did swing around a bit, but there were no alarms as Bangladesh survived the morning session losing only two wickets, one of them to a run out. What the Sri Lankan bowlers had done was to dry up the runs as the tourists were crawling at 2.2 runs an over in the morning session.
The wicket had variable bounce and the Bangladeshis weren’t able to bat with the assurances they had done in Galle and were half the side down at tea with the scoreboard reading 155 for five. The second new ball did the trick late in the day as the tourists lost three quick wickets, two of them in the first over after taking the new ball by Nuwan Kulasekara. He finished with three for 54.
Bangladesh’s experienced batsmen Mohammad Ashraful and Mushfiqur Rahim fell cheaply with Ashraful being run out responding to a quick single as Shaminda Eranga broke the stumps with a direct hit.
For Herath it was his 15th five-wicket haul. His tally of wickets now stands at 193. Only Chaminda Vaas (355) and Muttiah Muralitharan (800) have taken more wickets than the left-arm spinner, who finished as the highest wicket taker in Test cricket last year.
Herath is one of the players to be severely affected by Sri Lanka Cricket’s silly decision to cancel/postpone Test Matches. This year alone he has missed out on six Test Matches, including three Tests against number one ranked South Africa for his bosses at Maitland Place have exchanged domestic T-20 games in favour of Tests.
Sri Lanka opted for Suranga Lakmal instead of Chanaka Welegedara while for Bangladesh, Tamim Iqbal and Rubel Hossain returned to the side after injury.
Source: The Island (Sri Lanka)