Sri Lanka v West Indies, 2nd Test, Day 1 - Sri Lanka jolted by the West Indies quicks

The Colombo track pleased me a lot. It was a lively one with grass on it. The West Indies lost the toss but their three-pronged pace attack took no time to jolt the top order. Jerome Taylor, Kemar Roach and Jason Holder ran in with newly-discovered vim and banged the ball in at pace and extracted bounce from the surface. The Lankan batsmen found it tough to encounter the hostility of the Caribbean pacers who were hitting the right areas, like their past heroes by generating sharp pace.

 
At one stage, Sri Lanka were 90 for 5 but the young Milinda Sriwardana stood like a rock amid the adversity to steady the ship. He notched up his maiden Test fifty as the Lankan innings ended with the score of 200. 

The West Indian pacers did script hostility, but their bowling hero was the debutante left-arm orthodox bowler Jomel Warrican who was proving costly at the start but it didn’t dent his confidence at all. He fetched the wicket of Siriwardana who clobbered him for sixes earlier and complemented the good work of the pace bowlers by ending the Lankan innings quickly without much hassle. Jomel’s bowling average in first class cricket is 16.45 while in his first Test it is 16. 75 and as a bowler, I was not that impressed. He can improve in the course of time.

The West Indies have a tough task ahead of them tomorrow. Dhamika Prasad and Herath will not sit back and relax but they all come out all guns blazing.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar