Ind Vs SL 2nd Test: Pant Hits The Fastest Fifty, Indian Batting Extends It To The Third Day! Skip to main content

Ind Vs SL 2nd Test: Pant Hits The Fastest Fifty, Indian Batting Extends It To The Third Day!

Source: BCCI

Having all the time in the world India didn’t really need to hurry setting a target and so batted on till the 9th wicket fell, and luckily extending the pink-ball Test match to the third day. Given their pitch-specific one-day cricket tactics India scored at a very healthy 4+ per over run rate scoring 303/9 in the 69thover setting a target of 447 runs to win for Sri Lanka. This target is a tall order for the side batting last on any kind of pitch anywhere. The highlights of the Indian innings include the fastest fifty in Test cricket for India by Rishabh Pant (50) who achieved the feat in just 28 balls, bettering that of Kapil Dev in 30 balls; good opening partnership with Rohit (46) tackling the spinners well scoring all around the park including reverse sweeps, unfortunately missing his much deserved half-century; and Shreyas Iyer, the hero of the first innings, lapped up his consecutive second fifty of the match with an exciting 67-run innings. Except for Kohli (13) all batsmen contributed well and the bowlers too scored runs with Shami remaining not out at 16 when the declaration came.

 

It has been the class of Team India in all departments of the game that stood out in sharp contrast in this match than the pitch behavior. The Sri Lankans did poorly in both bowling and fielding—their pacers not at all matching the might of Bumrah-Shami and their spinners, particularly Lasith Embuldeniya, were let down often by the slip catchers. In India second innings Embuldeniya had to be content with 3 wickets and Praveen Jayawickrama with 4—both of them deserved a fifer in at least one innings. With just 7 overs left in the second day to start chasing the mammoth target Sri Lanka lost opener Lahiru Thirimanne for a duck in the very first over by Bumrah. Fortunately, captain Dimuth Karunaratne and Kushal Mendis saw through the day with the team score of 28/1 at stumps. It is to be seen tomorrow whether India would need one or two or three sessions to sweep the series 2-0, now a foregone conclusion.

 

Earlier in the morning session today, India needed just about 6 overs to get the remaining 4 Sri Lanka wickets bundling them out for a paltry 109, taking a huge lead of 143 runs. Jasprit Bumrah, firing all cylinders since the first day, achieved a fifer which is his first on Indian soil while R Ashwin got into the act with 2 wickets. In batting, apart from Iyer, Rishabh Pant sparkled in both innings and in the Series too with his brilliant 96 in the first test. Only it’s still a long wait for Virat Kohli to score a century as he ends this Series without even a single fifty. We already mentioned about Ravindra Jadeja’s all-round glory of 175 not out and a haul of 9 wickets in that test. Test Cricket is over for some time to come now as the IPL-2022 gets underway later this month with 10 franchises ready to fight it out.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The VIP Brat: A Study in Contrast!

Here we’re talking about only two  compartments inside a particular AC 2-Tier coach in a particular daily train under the Indian Railways that departs a particular originating station at around noontime and reaches the destination city early morning the next day. The train is popular because it is superfast and always on time. That fateful noon too, the train was ready for boarding about one hour before departure. We cut to the inside of that particular coach having those two compartments for our contrasting study. Two elderly couples were in a state of considerable distress. One of them, both technically senior citizens, had been allotted two upper berths and the husband was at his wits end how to proceed, because his wife was being taken for check-up after surgeries in both of her knees—she could hardly walk and her climbing up the berth was a sheer impossibility. The husband was also on the wrong side of the sixties, but he thought he could manage the climbing once he managed a ...

Mitali: The Trauma of Losing a Sibling

Maybe I lied to her when I used to reassure her that she was going to be alright and was going to resume her life in some measure of normalcy in the future years; maybe all my gestures/expressions were false when I used to run my fingers across her forehead or embrace her on occasions when she was able to move around a bit; and maybe all my exhibitions of love care and responsibility were exposed as superficial when I failed to turn up in Delhi where she along with my mother were treated during September-October, 2022 (my mother Urmila Chakravarty was also diagnosed with dental cancer the same month the same year as she was) and when all the members of my parental family and the in-laws converged. Since that fateful day in August, 2022 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer to that disastrous day of March 6, 2025—the day my younger blood sister Mitali (Mainu) Chakravarty Sarma (November 2, 1963—March 6, 2025) passed away in the wee hours in a hospital in Guwahati after giving a bra...

Release of Book 'Randomized: A Dozen Short Stories'!

The fourth collection of stories titled 'Randomized: A Dozen Short Stories' by Chinmay Chakravarty has been released on Amazon KDP just now! This collection, short stories in a lighter vein plus with mild satire like the previous collections, has been published in both the E-book and Paperback formats. The links are given below:  International: Click Here ! India: Click Here !  Other collections of short stories by the same author: The Cheerless Chauffeur and Other Tales(2021)--Notion Press. Funny and Fishy Tales(2022)--KDP. The Weirdos(2022)--Ukiyoto Publishing. All books of the author are available on Goodreads, apart from Amazon and other outlets! Have a look!