Sri Lanka defy India to draw Kotla Test

NEW DELHI: This Test and the series in general, began with the focus primarily on pitches as India talked up their need to prepare for South Africa.
In spite of certain distractions over the course of five days, the game ended with the 22-yard strip at the Ferozeshah Kotla reclaiming its rightful place at the centre of all the attention, as it usually does in most games here.
Only this time, it did so by refraining from its usual bag of tricks. On a uniformly passive surface where the bounce was even, not one puff of dust was raised as Sri Lanka batted out 87 painful overs on a fifth-day surface to walk away with a draw they can be proud of in the third and final Test of the series.
In doing so, they lost the services of only three batsmen on the fifth day, among them one retired hurt, and one to a no-ball from Ravindra Jadeja which the umpire overlooked. Jadeja was guilty a second time, bowling Chandimal with a beauty only to see the umpire stop this time to check where the foot landed, and finding it a shade over the line. India’s bowlers took only two wickets on the day.
The impassive pitch proved a perfect ally to the resolute Lankans, frustrating India’s spinners no end, in particular Ravichandran Ashwin. The pacers toiled manfully away but lost some of their sting as the match progressed.
The Lankans, heckled for large parts of the game for their struggles in Delhi’s smoggy conditions, needed a new hero to salvage the day and found one in the now-11-Testold Dhananjaya de Silva (119 retired hurt; 219 balls, 15x4, 1x6), who dished out a masterclass in fourth-innings batsmanship before hobbling off with a thigh injury.
Playing for a draw can be tricky and De Silva studiously avoided going into his shell, instead keeping the scoring rate ticking and using his feet well against the spinners. He walked the fine line between playing risky, and being dominant, to become the first Sri Lankan batsman in 10 years to score a fourth-innings away Test century.
It took that sort of momentous effort for the Lankans to eke out a stalemate to follow their biggest-ever Test defeat in Nagpur. Dhananjaya’s third Test ton was followed by debutant Roshen Silva’s valiant, unbeaten 74 and a 94-run unbeaten stand with an edgy Niroshan Dickwella, which finally convinced the Indians they would not be able to make this a 2-0 series scoreline.
Not on this pitch, which stood firm as a rock partly because of the initial attempts to retain grass cover and water it well. The plan appeared to have been altered a day before the game, robbing the Indians both of the assistance a more green track could have provided the seamers, and the bite a crumbling Kotla has traditionally provided for spinners late in a Test match.
Captain Virat Kohli called it a “tired pitch”, while Cheteshwar Pujara was quick to blame it for the result. “Overall we bowled well, especially looking at the wicket. We were expecting it to deteriorate a bit more on Days Four and Five. It was a flat wicket, maybe because of the weather. On any other pitch, on Day 5, there will be a lot of assistance.”
Pujara was quick to dismiss the travails of the spinners, terming it a one-off and adding, “There wasn’t much assistance. If you look at the entire home season, they are the most difficult bowlers for any opposition.” India didn’t get the preparation here they hoped they would ahead of South Africa, but must look to put this annoyance of a draw behind them. They have, after all, got their ninth successive series win, six of which came at home, to mark a golden run. Now it’s time to draw a line in the sand.
As for the Lankans, having delivered a fitting riposte in the thrust-and-parry game, they can look to the future with hope.