Despite incisive fast bowling from Indian pacers which saw Sri Lanka losing four wickets in the morning session of fourth day's play in the Kolkata Test, the visitors accumulated a handy lead of 91 runs in their first innings.
Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar picked three and one wicket respectively, but some stubborn resistance from the Sri Lankan lower order thwarted India's plans of wrapping up the Lankan innings quickly.
At Lunch, Sri Lanka were 263-8 in 28.2 overs with the the ninth wicket pair of Rangama Herath coming up with an extremely useful cameo of 43* and Suranga Lakmal scoring 10* .
Shami who failed to claim a wicket despite bowling a very fine spell of seam and swing bowling yesterday evening was the pick of the Indian pacers as he grabbed three wickets in the first session and was almost unplayable most of the time. It was in that phase when Kumar and Shami combined to come up with some seriously hostile bowling that Lanka lost three wickets in space of 9 balls.
The first one to go was overnight batsman Niroshan Dickwella (35) as he edged a Shami delivery packed with bounce, pace and swing to Virat Kohli in slips. Dickwella and Dinesh Chandimal had added 62 runs for the fifth wicket. Four balls later, it was Dasun Shanaka who fell leg before to an inswinger from Kumar fora duck. Five balls later, Sri Lankan skipper Chandimal, on 28, edged an outswinger from Shami to wicket keeper Wriddhiman Saha.
The fourth wicket of Dilruwan Perera was Shami's third, totally unplayable and an absolute beauty—an outswinger—but this came after Perera survived a close DRS call for leg before at 0 and a vigil that lasted 74 minutes even though he just scored 5 in 34 balls.
