On a sluggish pitch and outfield at the R Premadasa Stadium on Wednesday night, Sri Lanka made most of the opportunity of taking on a heavily-depleted Indian cricket team to notch a narrow four-wicket victory in the second T20 and level the three-match series. The third and final T20I will be played on Thursday night at the same venue.
India were forced to hand debut to four players — Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Nitish Rana and Chetan Sakariya after nine of their frontline players were forced out of the series opening to the fact that one of them, Krunal Pandya, was found coronavirus positive on Tuesday morning.
The discovery of the coronavirus case in the Indian camp not only postponed the game by one day to Wednesday, but it also forced a heavy chunk of India’s firepower on the tour into hotel isolation.
Apart from Krunal, Hardik Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Krishnappa Gowtham, Deepak Chahar and Manish Pandey were the other players who have been ruled out of the remainder of the series.
The visiting team was thus forced to play all of their five specialist batsmen available for selection, something that hampered their entire game plan in the second match and also puts them in a spot of bother going into the series decider to be played on Thursday night.
India could manage only 132/5 from their 20 overs despite making a positive start and being en route to a challenging total halfway through their links. Both the India debutants, Padikkal and Gaikwad were very impressive with the bat in their first outing on the international circuit.
Gaikwad did show some nerves early on but provided India with a positive start in the company of captain Shikhar Dhawan. The right-handed opening batsman, who plays for Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League, scored 21 in an innings which was both confident as well as a little risky given the weight of the occasion.
After Gaikwad was dismissed, Padikkal showed his batting prowess with strokes all around the ground but Sri Lankan spinners were far too good for this young and experienced Indian batting line-up.
Also, credit should be given to the Sri Lankan captain who had used as many as eight different bowling options in the first nine overs of the innings to ensure that none of the Indian batsmen settled down.
Starting with the dismissal of Dhawan, who top scored with 40, Sri Lankan spinners Akila Dananjaya and Wanindu Hasaranga produced plenty of troubles for the Indian team as their batsmen could not adjust to the slowness of the pitch which was also turning square as well at times.
India huffed puffed to get to 132/5 in their 20 overs which meant that the task was up to the bowlers to keep them in the contest. While Bhuvneshwar Kumar was tidy early on, not giving Sri Lankan batsmen any scope to free their arms, Sakariya was struggling with line and return which worked in the favour of the home team.
Sanju Samson had a forgettable day both with the bat in hand the wicket as he could not make any impact as an experienced player in this young Indian line-up. After being dismissed in an awkward manner for cheap by Dananjaya, Samson then made plenty of mistakes behind the wickets which included runs, a dropped catch as well as an erroneous call for DRS which was not taken.
Indian spinners Rahul Chahar and Varun Chakravarthy also did not get similar returns from the surface on which their Sri Lankan counterparts were able to, earlier in the game. Sri Lankan spinners saw their deliveries turning square as well as stopping a bit after pitching on the wicket, which cannot be said in the case of their Indian counterparts who at times looked absolutely flat.
But combined with the inexperience and nervousness from this young and under pressure Sri Lankan batting line-up, and some good work by the Indian team, the visiting side was able to force the contest into an exciting finish, which ended with Sri Lanka as the winning side with four wickets in hand and two balls to spare.
Minod Bhanuka did well to keep Sri Lanka in the contest for the majority of the time even though the others around him fell without making an impact. Avishka Fernando was dismissed for 11, Sadeera Samarawickrama made 8, Dasun Shanaka contributed with 3 which meant that the likes of Dhananjaya de Silva and others had to finish the job for the home team.
Hasaranga showed great intent in his innings of 15 which in a way signalled India that they did not have much room to make a comeback, as Sri Lanka kept on inching closer to the target. It was, however, the effort of de Silva, who scored 40 out of from 34 balls with one six and one four to ensure that his team end up on the right side of the result and keep the series alive going into the final match.
India also had another injury concern in form of fast bowler Navdeep Saini, who was not used at any stage in the game and left the field after suffering an injury to his hand towards the end of the game.
Devarchit Varma is a cricket writer and journalist with an experience of more than a decade, having worked at Hindustan Times (newspaper) and CricketCountry (website). Along with covering international and domestic cricket, he has also interviewed several current and former top players such as Rohit Sharma, Steve Smith, Dale Steyn, Michael Hussey, Jacques Kallis, Brendon McCullum, Shane Watson, Lasith Malinga and many more. He has also worked in other beats as a journalist in Bollywood (Reliance BigOye) and IT (SiliconIndia) industries.
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