KOTLA TEST

Gutsy de Silva and Roshen Silva deny India 2-0 win

CRICKET-IND-SRI The Indian cricket team pose with the trophy after winning the Test series against Sri Lanka 1-0 at the Feroz Shah Kotla | AFP

The third Test match between India and Sri Lanka, that hogged the limelight for smog troubles and was mostly played in hazy conditions, ended on a bright note for the visitors. Sri Lanka drew the Test match thanks to a gutsy century by Dhananjaya de Silva who retired hurt on 119 due to a glute muscle injury.

Test debutant Roshen Silva (74*) and Niroshan Dickwella (44*) came up with a determined effort to thwart all efforts by the Indian bowlers to see their team to safety with seven overs remaining to be bowled.

India could succeed in taking only two wickets on the final day. Lanka scored 299-5 in 103 overs when both sides shook hands. With this, India has won the three-match Test series 1-0. Indian skipper Virat Kohli was declared Man of the Series with an aggregate of 615 runs in three Tests including two consecutive double hundreds.

Sri Lanka, which is in a reconstructing phase post the retirement of its legends, deserves all the credit for ensuring there was no whitewash by the top-ranked Test team as it battled rain, a hostile bowling attack and smog, respectively in the three matches. The visitors drew the first Test in Kolkata that was rain-curtailed. India won the Nagpur Test by an innings and 239 runs. The Kotla Test was more in the news for the high pollution levels which troubled the Lankans and overshadowed some very fine performance from both sides. This is the host's ninth series win on the trot. With this, India have equalled Australia's world record of most consecutive series wins in Test cricket.

The honours belonged to Sri Lanka as they came out to bat on bright and sunny final day at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground with their top three back in the pavilion the evening before. It was down to their veteran all-rounder Angelo Mathews and Dhananjaya de Silva to ensure no further damage was done.

Mathew fell cheaply in the first session for 1, caught at slip by Ajinkaye Rahane off Ravindra Jadeja's bowling. Jadeja was the most successful bowler in the second innings taking 3-81.

Indians saw hope when, in the second session, they got the prized wicket of Sri Lanka captain Dinesh Chandimal, who had scored a brilliant century to lead the Lankan fightback in the first innings. He was clean bowled on 36 by off spinner Ravichandran Ashwin while attempting to step out and hit the off-spin. Beaten by the flight instead, the ball found the gap between the bat and pad to hit the off stump.

However, it was all-rounder Dhananjaya de Silva who was the hero of the Lankan resurgence. De Silva scored his third Test hundred in his 11th test to show the character and grit that his captain Chandimal had been demanding of his team on this tour. Welcomed to the crease by some hostile bowling by Indian pace duo of Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma, de Silva survived to take on the Indian spinners. Bowlers were unable to get much purchase out of a wicket that did not break down enough on the last day of the match. His 100 (188b, 13x4 1x6) came before the tea session, but he was visibly struggling with the injury in his hips and had to retire hurt soon.

India may have thought they sniffed a chance to erode the Lankan batting order further, but Dickwella had a sixth-wicket partnership of 94 runs with Roshen Silva to ensure no further damage by Indian bowlers was possible. Thirty-five minutes before close of play, both sides decided to shake hands and settled for a draw.  

This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please press Ctrl+D or change settings to bookmark this page.

Related Reading