India v Sri Lanka, 3rd Test, Day 1 - 5 Talking Points

After getting thumped by India in the second Test match at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground, Sri Lanka came to Delhi hoping to perform better and level the 3-match series, but it went pear-shaped for them at Feroz Shah Kotla on Day 1 as the hosts piled on the misery and scored more than 350 runs.

Sri Lanka made a slight comeback late in the day as they got a couple of wickets in the last hour of the final session to finish on a high note.  But despite those late blows it still remained India’s day as the hosts look all set to post a huge total on the board tomorrow.

Here are 5 talking points of the day’s play

The nature of the pitch

The Indian captain Virat Kohli has been quite vocal about his desire of playing on green pitches ahead of the South Africa tour. While his desire got fulfilled in Kolkata, the pitch in Nagpur was not quite of the same nature as it didn’t provide any extravagant movement to the quick bowlers. There was a lot of anticipation about the Firoz Shah Kotla pitch as people were keen to see if Virat was provided the kind of surface he was looking for by his home association. As it turned out, the pitch did have a green tinge to it, but it played pretty well and neither the Sri Lankan fast bowlers nor the spinners were able to pose too many challenges to the Indian batsmen. There was movement available for the first couple of overs, but the pitch settled down nicely after that.

The choice of the openers

With Shikhar Dhawan back in the squad, it was always going to be tough for Virat Kohli to pick his two openers for the game as all the three openers in the squad have been in terrific form of late. Most people were of the opinion that the Indian captain should persist with the opening pair of Murali Vijay and KL Rahul as they are the two technically sound openers and are expected to do the job for team India in Overseas conditions too. But Virat brought Dhawan back into the XI and Rahul had to make away which was probably a bit unfair on the Karnataka opener as he had been scoring runs consistently in test match Cricket for India in the last 12-18 months.

Dilruwan Perera’s 100 wickets

The Sri Lankan off spinner Dilruwan Perera, who is otherwise having a very tough series, got Shikhar Dhawan’s wicket in the first hour of the day’s play to give the visitors the first breakthrough and with that he completed his 100 wickets in test matches as well. He became the fastest Sri Lankan bowler to reach the 100-wicket mark by doing so in 25 test matches only. The great Muttiah Muralitharan, who is arguably the best off spinner in the history of the game, had taken two test matches more than Perera to achieve that feat which is something for Perera to be proud of.

Hundreds by Murali Vijay and Virat Kohli

It was a good batting track, but the Indian team found themselves in a spot of bother before lunch as Dhawan and Pujara got dismissed below the score of 100. However Murali Vijay and Virat Kohli got together and put some amazing counterattacking test match batting on display as they didn’t spare any Sri Lankan bowler. Whatever came their way got smashed and India’s run rate at one point of time was over 4 and a half.

While Murali Vijay got to his hundred before tea which was 11th of his test career, Virat completed his 20th test match hundred immediately after tea as the duo stitched together a double hundred partnership to put India into an absolutely  dominating position. Murali Vijay’s celebration after his hundred was pretty interesting as he tried to emulate the celebration style of the French Footballer Antoine Griezmann and failed horribly in his attempt.

Sandakan’s late strikes

It could have been an absolutely awful day for Sri Lanka had it not been for a couple of quick wickets right before the stumps courtesy their young Chinaman bowler Lakshan Sandakan.

The 26-year old, who had been reluctant to bowl his wrong ones all day, bowled a couple of them in the right channel in his last spell of the day and outfoxed two of India’s best players of spin in Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane to get them out both stumped. Those two dismissals took some gloss out of what was utter dominance by India on Day 1.