At the start of the fifth and final day of the Test match and the series, Sri Lanka had a slender lead of 16 runs. India needed only four good deliveries to wrap things up and complete a thumping whitewash. One obvious challenge for the visitors was the man in red-hot form. But Keshara Nuwantha’s resistance came out of syllabus for them, and the other southpaw prevented the last wicket’s fall to salvage a draw.
The Dinusha show
The 25-year-old hometown boy had a dream home series against India. Sri Lanka had a rough outing. A heavy defeat in the first Test, and India enforcing the follow-on in the second Test, was not something the hosts would feel happy about. But their positive takeaway, and the only silver lining from this series, is Sonal Dinusha. Dinusha scored 420 runs at an impressive average of 140 across four innings, which is 34.73% of the total team runs in this series. As far as impact is concerned, this is huge for a cricketer whose Test career is still in a nascent stage.
Before coming to bat and fight a David vs Goliath battle on the fifth day, Dinusha knew that his challenge was going to be the Indian spin triad. Ravindra Jadeja is highly experienced, Manav Suthar has gained a reputation for his incredible skill set, and Saransh Jain, the off-spinner, was his negative match-up. Most batters chose sweep and reverse sweep to counter the spinners, as it is a safe option to have.
But Dinusha opted for that because he is adept at these strokes. Records say that he scored 53 of his 103 in the first innings through square leg side, and that number comes to 47 out of 133* in the second innings.
He used paddle sweeps and nudged more to find 32 runs from behind square. If we take the stats combining every type of sweep, including paddle, reverse, conventional and slog, Dinusha scored 173 runs from these strokes! Dinusha presses forward initially when the bowler is in his delivery stride, and that gives him some split seconds extra to choose the type of sweep he wants to play.
Another good thing about his batting is the opening of the front leg. He does it so quickly that it gives him some extra time to generate some power on those square-of-the-wicket strokes. The secret behind his success is getting those extra couple of seconds of time or so that puts him ahead of the bowler.
India’s ploys fail
India used a few ploys to stop that, but nothing proved fruitful for them. They kept protection at square leg, but Dinusha’s sweeps went past the fielder. Left-arm spinners attacked his pads with a length ball and a leg slip in place, but Sonal went deep in his crease and nudged it, evading the fielder there. In the end, Dinusha remained unbeaten on 133 and Sri Lanka escaped an embarrassing whitewash.
Records say that before this Test, no batter scored twin hundreds in a Test against India batting at number 6 or below. Dinusha scored 236 across both innings (103 & 133), and this is the second-highest score by any batter against India by a lower-middle-order batter, bettered only by Jamie Smith, who scored 272 (184 & 88) at Birmingham last year. Under these conditions, Dinusha is only the fourth Sri Lankan to score both innings hundreds. Tillakaratne Dilshan, Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis are the other three batters to achieve this feat, all of them against Bangladesh in away Tests.
The Test series was a damp squib for the hosts. Before this series, Sri Lanka had to win five of their eight Tests to achieve 60% PCT to qualify for the finale, but now, they have to win five out of their remaining six Tests. Qualifying for the WTC final is an arduous task for them. But they have taken a few positives, which is going to help them in the next WTC cycle.
Dinusha is a shining prospect for them; Pasindu Sooriyabandara replaced Dinesh Chandimal and got success in the second Test. With Pathum Nissanka and Kusal Mendis returning, the island nation will get a quality core batting line-up with Nissanka-Udara-Kusal-Kamindu-Chandimal and Dinusha. Their pace attack is in safe hands with Lahiru Kumara and Asitha Fernando leading the pack. Prabath Jayasuriya and Keshara Nuwantha are decent tweakers to rely on.
Sonal translates to golden. Sri Lanka would love to see their golden prospect glittering in every condition in the purest format of the game. Dinusha boasts a batting average of 86 in his first 9 Test innings. His next red-ball assignment for his country will be in November against Pakistan and he will look to make the most of it before a stern test awaits him in New Zealand next year.
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