New Zealand v Sri Lanka, 2nd Test, Day 1 - Late wickets waste Sri Lanka's hard work

The Hamilton track was greenish and seam-and-swing bowling was on offer. The Sri Lankan batsmen decided to counter such a challenging condition with aggression. Kusal Medis set the tone and Dinesh Chandimal tried to continue the aggressive mood.

Surely, I need to say that the New Zealand new ball bowlers didn’t bowl the right way they should have on this track. They didn’t pitch the ball more on the good length or full enough to extract movement and thus, allowed the Lankan batsmen enough freedom. And then, there were those missed-run-out chances and a dropped catch. But an aggressive approach doesn’t last long on such tracks if you don’t add resolve and for which Sri Lanka were in a bother at 121 for 4.

Angelow Mathews and Milinda Siriwardana realized that they are neither playing in the Bangladesh Premier League nor the Big Bas League nor the Indian Premier League and for which they injected stability – fluency was there, but not at the cost of caution. Milinda and Angelow added 138 runs for the fifth wicket at 4.6 runs/over.

In the final session, the sky turned gloomy and the conditions were ideal for the pacers to cash in and this time, the Kiwi pacers didn’t make any mistake to spoil Sri Lanka’s hard work. Trent Boult’s away movement curtailed Milinda’s stay and Vithanage was dismissed quickly while a needless-and-risky single culminated into a run out to waste all the hard works of Angelow Mathews and Milinda Siriwardana.

This young unit of Sri Lanka has been impressive so far. They just lack the experience to bloom and, I think, they will bloom in the course of time. To succeed in the longer formats, they need to understand the value of spending time at the crease and how to convert those 20s into 50s, 50s into hundreds and hundreds into double tons.

Thank You
Faisal Caesar