IND vs SL 2022: We never thought it would finish by day 3 – Dimuth Karunaratne urges batters to put their hand up

Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne admitted that he never thought the Test match would finish after three days against India at the IS Bindra Stadium, Mohali on Sunday. The tourists received a drubbing as they were beaten by a massive margin of an innings and 222 runs, which is their second-biggest loss against India.

India posted a massive score of 574 runs after Rohit Sharma won the toss and decided to bat first. Ravindra Jadeja scored a fine knock of 175 runs while Hanuma Vihari and Ravichandran Ashwin scored fifties.

However, Sri Lanka could not show the fight with the bat as they were skittled out of 174 runs in the first innings after Pathum Nissanka scored a fifty. The tourists were then asked to follow on and they could only manage 178 runs on the board to lose by a gargantuan margin.

In fact, there were some uncalled shots by the Sri Lankan batters and they definitely need to pull up their socks. Charith Asalanka and Suranga Lakmal threw their wickets and they will need to show more resistance with the bat against a potent Indian bowling attack.

Dimuth Karunaratne said while talking in the post-match presentation, “We never thought it would finish by day three. The batters need to put their hands up and bat longer innings. When you are playing against India you have to capitalize on the starts, it was easy to bat on this track, once you get in you have to score big. We backed ourselves (by playing the extra seamer). We thought the wicket would crack open and is going to be up and down. If we had bowled better then we could have restricted them. We were too defensive or too aggressive with the bat, need to get a balance between both by rotating the strike and that’s how you play a big inning. As a batting unit, we have to put our hands up and score big. We did well for the first two sessions but could not execute when the ball got old and those are things we need to work on.”

Sri Lanka looked at sea while facing the likes of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. In fact, the Mohali pitch was good for batting and there wasn’t a great deal of help for the spinners but the visitors came up with ordinary batting. Sri Lanka did lack application in their batting and it led to their downfall. Thus, they will look to bounce back stronger in the second Test match, which will be played in Bengaluru from Saturday.