Dinusha Batted 426 Balls Across the Match to Save Colombo
Sonal Dinusha made 103 and 133 not out at the SSC, becoming the third Sri Lankan to score centuries in both innings of a Test against India. The match was drawn and India took the series 1-0.
Sri Lanka have drawn the second Test against India at the SSC in Colombo, losing the series 1-0 but denying India a 2-0 sweep through one of the more complete individual performances of the year.
What happened
India declared on 503 for 9. Sri Lanka were dismissed for 290 and followed on. Batting again, they reached 429 for 9 before the sides shook hands on the final day.
Sonal Dinusha made 103 in the first innings and 133 not out in the second. Across the match he faced 426 balls. In the second innings he shared a century stand with Keshara Nuwantha that took the game beyond India's reach.
The records
It was his third hundred in four innings, and the series as a whole reads: 100, 84, 103, 133 not out. He passed fifty in all four innings, which makes him the first Asian batter to do so in his first four Test innings against India.
He is also only the third Sri Lankan to score centuries in both innings of a Test against India, after Duleep Mendis in 1982 and Aravinda de Silva in 1997. That is a short list to join, and he joined it in his fourth innings against them.
He was named player of the match.
The other way to read it
A follow-on enforced and then survived is usually a story about a bowling attack running out of ideas, and India will look at 429 for 9 across the best part of two days and conclude that they did not take their chances.
But the more useful reading is about the surface. The SSC on days four and five was not a pitch that made batting easy so much as one that made dismissing a set batter very hard, and Dinusha's response was to refuse to give it away. Four hundred and twenty six balls is not a scoring feat. It is an endurance one.
The series
India won the first Test at Galle by 165 runs, in a match that was India's 600th and which made Galle the first ground in Asia to host 50 Tests. The Colombo draw leaves the series 1-0 and both sides with points in the current World Test Championship cycle.
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