We bowled badly, fielded badly and batted badly, says deflated Herath

Sri Lanka stand-in captain Rangana Herath admitted his team was outplayed in all departments in the opening Test.

Herath said India opener Shikhar Dhawan’s early blitzkrieg rattled the home team and they never recovered from it. Dhawan was dropped at the score of 31 and went onto smash 190, scoring a hundred within a session --- between lunch and tea --- on the opening day.

“We had a few plans for him but we failed to execute. If you take for example, we allowed him too much of width. In the first session of the match itself, the game started slipping away from us. We bounced back well but he had by then got off to a terrific start,” a dejected Herath said.

“We bowled badly, fielded badly and batted badly in the first innings. We are a better team than this. We need to find out how we can do better than this moving forward,” Herath added.

“I felt that it was after a long time a team scored 600 runs against us. We should have bowled better. The other point is most of our batsmen got closer to three figures and got out, whereas the Indian batters made big hundreds. That was a big difference too in the game,” the Lankan captain added.

Sri Lanka were reduced to 10 men within the first hour of the game after losing Asela Gunaratne to injury. Herath himself picked up an injury on the third afternoon and the Sri Lankan second innings was reduced to a farce as they batted with nine men chasing 550 for victory.

It was an example why the substitute’s rule is important in cricket. Batting for allowing substitutes, Herath said: “If there is an option, we would love to have them (substitutes).

“It was a massive blow (to lose Gunaratne). He has been scoring in the last few months. He wasn’t available to bat or bowl and that was a huge blow for us.”