Lakmal hurts India’s batting pride
Sri Lankan pacer rattles the top order on a green top at Eden Gardens but rain severely curtails play on Day I
KOLKATA:The delivery was worth the delay and had the first day of the opening Test not been punctuated by breaks that ensured only an hour’s play, Thursday would have provided the kind of test Virat Kohli says his India team would love to embrace.
A total of 88.1 overs were lost but in conditions ideal for fast bowling, Suranga Lakmal reduced India to 17/3 after Sri Lanka asked the hosts to bat. Cheteshwar Pujara was on eight off 43 balls and Ajinkya Rahane was on zero at stumps.
Till play resumed after tea, Lakmal had not conceded a run in 26 deliveries and dismissed KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan. Lakmal stretched it to 30 balls when he completed his fifth over in the final session. He bowled six more deliveries in a spell that left ruin in its wake for India because he had got Kohli too.
Rahul went first ball, joining an all-Indian club that includes Sudhir Nayak and Sunil Gavaskar to have been dismissed off a delivery that started a Test at Eden Gardens. Bowling fromthe High Court end, Lakmal started with a ball that seemed like it came in the middle of a dream spell. It pitched on the off-stump and veered just away on a track that offered bounce. Rahul had to play and was caught at the wicket. This was a vicious or beautiful delivery depending on which side you were on.
In the third ball of that over, Lakmal fired an off-cutter that left Pujara clueless. Dinesh Chandimal buttressed the slip cordon by one to four but with a gully and backward point, Lakmal didn’t end the over half as well as he had begun.
By not making the batsmen play enough, Lahiru Gamage couldn’t keep up the intensity though he was unlucky not to have got Pujara with one that nipped back in his sixth over. Immediately, the light was offered. Gamage had also got Pujara to play a streaky shot that bisected slip and gully.
But on a day so grey that it seemed more like Eden Park, Lakmal was a livewire India found too hot to handle.
Dhawan, whose counter-at- tacking skills were praised by Kohli, went for an expansive drive to one that held its line and played on. How judicious it was for the opener to have tried to play on the rise on such a firstday wicket is debatable but at 13/2 it left India wobbling.
Lakmal got Kohli with a ball that came back, but more than the delivery, what perhaps dismissed India’s best batsman was that it came during a spell where he rarely strayed in line. Kohli wasn’t really offering a defensive stroke; rather it looked like he was playing a tentative prod.