India beats Sri Lanka, seals series with innings victory

Samarth Srivastava
Published on: 6 Aug 2017 9:14 AM GMT
India beats Sri Lanka, seals series with innings victory
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India beats Sri Lanka, seals series with innings victory

Colombo: In yet another phenomenal performances, India thumped hosts Sri Lanka and won by and innings and 53 runs on Day 4 in the second of the three-match Test series at Sinhalese Sports Club here on Sunday.

Forced to follow on, the Lankan batsmen were all out for 386 runs in their second innings on the penultimate day of the Test.

Left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja did most of the damage with figures of 5/152. This is Jadeja's maiden five-fer against Sri Lanka. Star off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin had figures of 2/132 while medium-pacer Hardik Pandya returned 2/31. Fast bowler Umesh Yadav took one wicket.

Lankan batsmen, however, gave stern fightback to India with Dimuth Karunaratne and Kusal Mendis smashing tons.

Dimuth played a gem of a knock. His 141-run inning was laced with 16 boundaries. Mendis, who was dismissed on Day 3, scored 135-ball 110-run knock with 17 fours.

This is India's first innings win against SL. With this victory, Kohli becomes the first India skipper to lead his team to two series victories in Sri Lanka.

India have now taken an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.This is India's eighth series win in a row.

Jadeja was named Man of the Match for his performance both with the bat and the ball.

Several Sri Lankan batsmen displayed poor selection on a pitch which was offering a fair bit of turn, specially to Ashwin.

Despite being in a position where they needed to play patiently and defend as if their lives depended on it, several Sri Lankan batsmen opted to go for the attacking shots, which proved to be their undoing on quite a few instances.

As a result, the hosts suffered a batting collapse in their lower and middle order, losing their last five wickets for just 76 runs.

Starting the post lunch session at 302/4, Sri Lanka saw their second innings come to an end with only a few overs before the tea break.

Starting the day at the overnight score of 209/2, the Sri Lankans ran into trouble shortly after the start, losing Malinda Pushpakumara (16) and skipper Dinesh Chandimal (2) during the morning session.

Pushpakumara was batting comfortably and hit three boundaries over a patient 58-ball innings.

But all the hard word work was undone when the right-hander decided to reverse his stance to a delivery from Ashwin. His attempted shot missed the ball completely which went on to disturb the stumps.

Chandimal had a lucky escape off the second ball he faced when he edged an Ashwin delivery to the slips. But Ajinkya Rahane was not able to react quickly enough at first slip and the batsmen went for a couple of runs.

But Rahane did not make any mistake in the next over, diving to his right to pull off a low catch at first slip after Jadeja managed to induce an outside edge from Chandimal.

Dimuth Karunaratne and Mathews then batted patiently to frustrate the visitors till lunch.

Karunaratne was the top scorer in the hosts' second innings. Dropped by Lokesh Rahul at short leg off Jadeja's bowling when on 95 early in the morning session, Karunaratne went on to score 141 runs off 307 balls with 16 hits to the fence.

He finally fell to a superb ball from Jadeja in the fifth over after lunch with Rahane pulling off another excellent catch in the slips.

Jadeja dusmissed Mathews in his next over. The batsman was outfoxed by some extra bit of bounce as the ball took the edge on its way to the wicket-keeper.

Mathews' departure saw the Sri Lankan resistance fall apart as the rest of their batsmen failed to deal with the Indian bowling.

The following is the final scoreboard of Sri Lanka vs India second cricket Test match at the Sinhalese Sports Club here on Sunday:

India: 1st innings: 622/9 (Declare)

Sri Lanka: first innings 183 all out

Sri Lanka (second innings - follow-on):

Dimuth Karunaratne c Rahane b Jadeja 141

Upul Tharanga b Umesh 29

Kusal Mendis c Saha b Pandya 110

Malinda Pushpakumara b Ashwin 16

Dinesh Chandimal c Rahane b Jadeja 2

Angelo Mathews c Saha b Jadeja 36

Niroshan Dickwella c Rahane b Pandya 31

Dilruwan Perera st Saha b Jadeja 4

Dhananjaya de Silva c Rahane b Jadeja 17

Rangana Herath not out 17

Nuwan Pradeep c Dhawan b Ashwin 1

Total: (in 116.5 overs) 386

Fall of wickets: 7-1 (Upul Tharanga, 2.6 overs), 198-2 (Kusal Mendis, 54.5), 238-3 (Malinda Pushpakumara, 72.2), 241-4 (Dinesh Chandimal, 73.5), 310-5 (Dimuth Karunaratne, 95.4), 315-6 (Angelo Mathews, 97.3), 321-7 (Dilruwan Perera, 99.3), 343-8 (Dhananjaya de Silva, 105.4), 384-9 (Niroshan Dickwella, 115.1)

Bowling:

Umesh Yadav 13-2-39-1

Ravichandran Ashwin 37.5-7-132-2

Mohammed Shami 12-3-27-0

Ravindra Jadeja 39-5-152-5

Hardik Pandya 15-2-31-2

Samarth Srivastava

Samarth Srivastava

Employed as sub-editor at newstrack.com. A learner, who loves covering sports, entertainment and defence kind of stuff.

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