Lanka take it away on day two

One of these days, a genius will come along and break up 'inconsistency', as applicable to India's cricket, into its component parts in order to facilitate better understanding.

And when that happens, the moment in time when Albert Einstein suggested that e equals a couple of other alphabets will pale into insignificance.

I mean, look at the situation on the morning of day two: a decent enough total on the board, a pitch that had something in it for seam and spin, a Lankan lineup under pressure following two collapses in the previous Test, and an Indian team on a collective high after pulling back in Kandy what it had squandered in Galle.

And look at the situation at the end of 90 overs -- lots of runs, precious few wickets, and an uphill battle from here on with defeat looming large as the most likely result for the side.

How does a team with so much going for it get into these situations?

The day, in fact, started well enough for the touring side. The Sri Lankan captain, early on, seemed hell bent on hitting his way out of trouble. The 'trouble' relates to his extremely poor run in recent times -- a sequence of low scores was broken when the Indians in the first innings in Galle literally gifted him a century, but since then it has been business as usual with scores of 3 and 6 in Kandy.

The trouble with Jayasuriya is his grip -- he holds the bat so very low down that the handle actually protrudes significantly above his right, or top, hand. Try it, and you'll find -- especially if you tend to hold the handle in a throttling, bicep-bulging grip, that the one thing you can not do is drive on the off.

Bowlers around the world have worked out that if you can bowl just back of length around off to Jayasuriya, he can be tamed. John Wright reminded the Indians of this with some help from his laptop, and Zaheer Khan and Venkatesh Prasad appear to have learnt their lesson.

Jayasuriya this morning kept trying to break free, but was not given sufficient room to indulge his penchant for cuts. Finally, he attempted to cut a ball that was in the driving zone, and for the second time this series, chopped it on to his stumps to depart on 30 off 42, with Lanka at the time on 48/1.

There was, though, already an indication of the kind of day India was going to have. Five runs previously, Harbhajan Singh produced a lovely looping delivery that had Jayasuriya lunging forward in defense. The ball hit the bat high, dropped onto his boot, and looped up for silly point to hold well. Umpire David Orchard however said no to the appeal.

The Indian bowlers, both seam and spin, did their part to near perfection in the morning session (a possible crib could be that Sairaj Bahutule was introduced very late, getting just one over before lunch -- but you have to set against that the fact that the seamers, in particular Prasad and Ganguly, did extremely well to keep up the pressure). Neither Marvan Atapattu nor Kumara Sangakkara managed to dominate -- and if Lanka went in to lunch with 9 of its wickets intact, the onus for that lies entirely on the fielding.

With the score on 75/1, Kumara Sangakkara pushed a ball from Harbhajan Singh to Dinesh Mongia, substituting at a close point. The fielder got it to his natural hand, the left. Marvan Atapattu, meanwhile, had come a long way down before being sent back. All Mongia had to do was lob the ball back to the bowler -- instead, he flung the throw wide, allowing the hopelessly stranded Atapattu to regain ground.

The score then inched to 90/1, before Sairaj Bahutule the wrist spinner came on for his sole over before the break. Ball three saw Sangakkara charging down, to be beaten by flight, loop and turn to be stranded a few feet down the track -- only for Sameer Dighe to muff the simplest of takes and with it, the stumping.

The sins of the fielders were visited on the team in the second session, as Atapattu and Sangakkara stitched together a solid second wicket stand of 71. The latter's wicket, in fact, came against the run of post-lunch play when, with the score on 119, Prasad got one to bounce a bit more than normal. Sangakkara (47 off 100) flashed into a cut, playing the length, and was undone by the extra bounce to get the top edge for Badani at second slip to make a very sharp chance look easier than it was.

Around this point, the Indians appeared to make a tactical error. Harbhajan and Bahutule were both getting turn and bounce, but rather than attack with the spinners in tandem, India opted to use seam at one end and spin at the other -- the result being that the Lankan batsmen, cannily, opted to see off the spin threat and counter-attack at the other end.

As play progressed in the afternoon session, Harbhajan began getting increasingly flat. My fellow columnist, Sujata Prakash, suggested at the time that perhaps the pressure of living up to Muralitharan's exploits was getting to him and that when the offie found he wasn't getting the kind of turn Murali did, he tightened up and lost it.

There could be something in that. Murali uses his indiarubber wrist to add to his fingerwork, thus getting substantially more revolutions on the ball than Harbhajan, whose wristwork is of the more classical, locked variety, does. It follows that the Indian offie wouldn't get the same amount of turn -- which he didn't need in any case since his forte is flight and loop and variety to aid the substantial turn he does get. Could it be that in trying for more than nature has equipped him for, he ended up getting less?

Another thought arises from the seam-spin combination: with runs going at one end, it seemed as though Harbhajan lost the plot, vis a vis his own role, a little bit and struggled to find a line between the flat containing one, and the more overtly aggressive one. And in the process, fell between both stools.

It is, in any case, something the Indian think tank will need to worry about, and solve -- and that right quick.

Another point of thought that occured in course of the day is Ganguly's reluctance to team two spinners together as an attacking combination. Indian teams in the past have been famous for using spin at both ends -- in its glory days, in fact, you would have seen spin, especially on conducive tracks, as early as the fifth and sixth overs. In this context, I seem to remember in the Test against Australia in Chennai, Ganguly using Harbhajan to attack but, even with the batting side under pressure, asking Nilesh Kulkarni (an attacking spinner by nature) to go round the wicket and wide of leg stump to a packed leg side field in an essentially defensive measure.

Wonder why.

It needs reiterating at this point that India would not be in its present plight if it had held its chances. With the score on 188/2, Bahutule turned one dramatically past Mahela Jayawardene, who cut and got the top edge -- only for Dighe to grass the ball that went right into his gloves. Dighe's fumbles against Bahutule are doubly surprising if only because both play for the same team, and the keeper should by rights have loads of experience in reading the spinner.

Given this background, Atapattu and Jayawardene, both reprieved in their 20s, made the Indians pay with classical strokeplay on both sides of the wicket -- and suddenly, the 234 India had put on the board looked considerably less formidable.

The 100 of the third wicket partnership came off a brisk 163 deliveries, and then Marvan Atapattu -- whose handling of Bahutule kept making you think of VVS Laxman taking on Shane Warne -- underlined the resemblance with the shot that brought up his 100. With Bahutule going around the wicket and attempting to hit a spot two feet outside leg and turn it back sharply in to the right hander, Atapattu skipped down the track at an angle, going outside the line of the ball to make room for a flowing inside out cover drive that took him to 100 off 201 deliveries, with 11 fours and 24 singles.

Atapattu has a habit of making his hundreds big ones. Pure luck -- read umpiring error -- ensured that India was let off the hook on that score, this time. In the 78th over, Harbhajan made one turn and bounce more than usual. The ball hit the batsman on the pad, then climbed onto his waist and from there, to short square leg. The catch was claimed, and given by umpire David Orchard -- the bat, though, was a long way away from ball. Lanka 252/3, Atapattu gone for 108 off 228 ending a partnership of 133 off 36.5 overs.

At that point, Jayawardene was batting 61 off 99 deliveries. Russel Arnold, another batsman searching for form after the Kandy debacle, came up to the plate with the obvious intention of hitting his way out of trouble. In this, he was aided by the fact that India had by then gone entirely on the defensive -- time and again, edged slashes flashed past those spots marked with an X where you would expect, especially against a new batsman, to find slips and gullies.

Prasad -- who, following his aberration at Galle, appears to have re-learnt the virtue of hitting a good line and length and sticking to it no matter what -- produced a modicum of joy for India towards close when, with the new ball, he bowled one at quicker than his usual pace on a good off stump line. Arnold (31 off 39 balls), who for his assassination attempts in this innings had taken to a bigger backlift than is the norm for him, was late coming down on the ball, which nipped smartly through to hit the stumps. Lanka 310/4, and yet again, the wicket had fallen only after a smart partnership of 58 off 71 deliveries.

Liyanage came in as nightwatchman -- and went to Harbhajan who, after flighting a few and getting frustrated by a batsman who kept him out more by luck than skill, ripped one down at what seemed to be Zaheer Khan's pace, catching the batsman by surprise and taking the edge through to the keeper (Lanka 321/5).

Maybe Steve Waugh has a point -- nightwatchmen don't really make too much sense, do they? Hashan Tillekeratne came in next -- and one ball later, an incident summed up India's day. Sourav Ganguly, getting the ball to swing and seam more than his real seamers, got Jayawardene attempting a pull to a ball that swerved far too much in the air to make the shot possible. The ball went high in the air -- and fell perfectly in between the keeper and two other fielders, all converging but none close enough to latch on to the chance.

The man to watch now is Jayawardene. Tentative early on, he got a second wind after that reprieve and opened out into fluent strokeplay. Atapattu has already made India pay for one lapse -- with 95 to his name off 148 deliveries, Jayawardene has done some billing already, but the real bill, one suspects, will be presented tomorrow when the Lankans, led by the man they call Baby Jaya, step on the throttle in a bid to bat India entirely out of the game.

You have to wonder, as Lanka went in on 323/5 (having added 310 runs in the day off the mandatory 90 overs to take a lead of 89 runs with five wickets still in hand), whether India has enough in the bank -- with ball and with bat -- to pay that bill.

Detailed Scorecards:
Ind 1st Innings
SL 1st Innings