Pakistan – no work and no play makes jack a dull ass rusty moron.
The opening bowlers went for more than 5 and 6 rpo. Thats the definition of rusty.
Catches were dropped, Mahela Jayawardene was allowed a 100 and Pakistans day went from bad to shithouse.
Younis Khan seemed a little lost as new man at the helm, and if he dint have the limelight on him before, he surely will now.
What next?
At 406-3, the only thing Pakistan can hope for now is a middle to lower order collapse, which is not entirely out of the question given the batsmen who are to follow.
Sri Lanka
400 runs in a day? We havent done that since 2007 and this is the first time its against a top flig team, . Usually its the Bangladeshi’s we thump for a cool 500 runs in a day.
Tharanga Paranavitana had a slightly less than spectacular debut. But many have scored ducks at the start and still made the cut. And there is no shame in getting out to Gul these days.
Sangakkara has now gotten past fifty 3 times in his last 5 innings, and have missed out on easy centuries by his standards. Maybe he is waiting till he gets the captaincy to get back to his double century scoring days.
By no means is he out of form, but its a little irritating when he throws away such good starts which have double hundred written all over it.
Can someone be out of form in one form of the game ? I dont know if thats possible but, Mahela has been in the thick of runs, and even during his lean patch he’s managed to put up runs on the board in tests.
Some will say since the weight of the captaincy is off him he batted freely, we will say its because he made the best of being let off three times.
A year ago, if someone told you that a Sri Lankan batsmen scored a century at 83, Tilan Samaraweera would not be among your first 100 guesses.
We wrote about born-again Tilan here, about how he has always been a solid player but in the last year or so he has been packing up on the red bull during his innings. His strike rates improved at least 10 times over, better for him and better for Sri Lanka.
And yesterdays innings earns us our ultimate stamp of approval.
What next ?
Sri Lanka should aim for 500 at lunch and declare at 650. And try to bury Pakistan with an innings to spare. With Dilshan and Vass to come these targets are not impossible.
It looked very easy for the batters after lunch and I think Warnapura’s opening knock, which I enjoyed immensely, settled any nerves for the men that followed especially after losing a wicket in the first over.
If SL are to win they need to get a move on today and not worry about personal milestones. I think the Pakistani bats might be hard to remove also so a declaration before tea is vital.
It’s difficult to really know what’s going to unfold until both teams bat but already it seems that Sri Lanka won’t lose this Test. The best Pakistan can hope for even at this early stage is a draw.
What happened to the referral system? Has it been canned already?
nesta> looks like the run fest will continue on today, unless sl picks up early wickets, if that doesnt happen we might be in for another long long long looooooooooooong day.
havent seen the referrals being used, im not sure if they are using it in this series ??