Abu Dhabi: A moment of madness threatened to ruin Sri Lanka’s start in the first Test against Pakistan but the culprit, captain Dinesh Chandimal, owned up and stood tall.
Chandimal failed to respond to a call for a run by a well-set Dimuth Karunaratne, ending in the latter’s runout as he was poised to get to a hard-earned century. However the skipper put the debacle behind to remain defiant until the end.
At stumps, Sri Lanka were 227 for 4 with Chandimal, after surviving a leg before review, on an unbeaten 60 off 184 balls and wicketkeeper batsman Niroshan Dickwella on a solid 42 off 63.
Karunaratne is not known for his batting blitzes. There is not much flair or grace in his style, yet he is a stubborn batsman who can quietly go about his job.
He was very much in line for a big one having scored a painstaking 93 off 205 deliveries, had Chandimal not been ball-watching. The southpaw hit one off Yasir Shah to wide mid-on and set off for a single, which was very much on, but Chandimal stayed rooted to the crease and Pakistan skipper Sarfraz Ahmad almost smashed the stumps to get an unlikely breakthrough after Harris Sohail had fired in an accurate throw.
With so much focus on Pakistan in their first Test since the retirement of Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan, it would have been fitting to see Pakistan make first use of the pitch but the toss went the way of Sri Lanka, who chose to bat.
Their openers weathered the first 10 overs from Pakistan pacers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Abbas on a turf that had a greenish tinge but the ball did not do much off the wicket. One expected Sri Lanka to build on the defiant start but a few ordinary shots threw them off track.
As soon as finger-spinner Shah was brought into attack, he extracted turn — enough to unsettle Kaushal Silva if not Karunaratne, who had gotten off to his usual sedate start. It was Hassan who got the reward for Shah’s impact although it was by no means a wicket-taking delivery. Silva, who took 52 balls for his 12, showed he has problems leaving deliveries outside off stump. He was lucky to survive an inside edge off Abbas that just missed the bails before a thick edge from an Ali delivery crashed onto the stumps.
Sri Lankan vice-captain Lahiru Thirimanne seemed to be in the 50-over mode. Instead of taking his time to settle in, he went for an atrocious shot off Shah on a full ball and was trapped plumb in front of the crease for a duck.
With that, Shah became the quickest spinner in Test history to take 150 wickets in terms of matches played. He managed the feat in his 27th match, one fewer than the previous record holder, Australia’s Clarrie Grimmett.
Kushal Mendis became Shah’s next victim just before lunch and Sri Lanka were reduced to 61-3. Not an ideal situation for skipper Chandimal to walk in after the break. It took him 42 deliveries to get to a scratchy seven before he slowly settled into the groove in the company of Karunaratne.
Sri Lanka looked as if they had managed to weather the storm and went into tea without further hiccups at 143-3.
There will be a lot of questions raised of Pakistan’s ploy to play three pacers and one specialist spinner. While there were high expectations from Amir, he was not even a shadow of how he performed in the West Indies, where he bagged 13 wickets.
Amir failed to take a wicket from his 17 overs while conceding 39 runs.
Abbas’ figures read 16-0-43-0, while Ali had 1-58 to show from his 17 overs and Shah returned 2-59 from 34.
However, Pakistan still managed to keep Sri Lanka’s scoring in check. A couple of early wickets on day two and they should be back in control.
