Mumbai, December 05: Tillakaratne Dilshan copped a second umpiring howler in two innings, but Tharanga Paranavitana and Kumar Sangakkara saw through the rest of the session. Not without anxious moments, though, as Harbhajan Singh got the ball to turn and bounce alarmingly.
Dilshan looked to play a game that doesn’t come natural to him: looking to pad away the big offbreaks from Harbhajan. Arguments will abound if that was the right way to go about it, but Dilshan was not allowed to make his own mistakes. In the sixth over of the day, he was given lbw while padding up to a sharp offbreak easily missing leg stump.
Harbhajan bowled smartly thereon and the two left-hand batsmen batted smartly too. He mixed pace, trajectory, line, angle, and beat the batsmen with all three variations. But Sangakkara and Paranavitana didn’t let him have a consistent go at either of them, taking quick, sharp singles. Three of his subsequent overs of that spell featured plays and misses, all four featured singles.
Paranavitana seemed more at home than Sangakkara, who looked for the getaway sweep shot against Harbhajan and almost got out twice. Even at 98kph, Harbhajan got sharp turn. Although he didn’t show much of the doosra, Harbhajan kept the batsmen guessing with topsinners from round the stumps.
While good with defence and not playing away from the body, every now and then Paranavitana did keep hitting the aggressive shot for release. Especially against Pragyan Ojha, whom he lofted for three boundaries to the on side.
By lunch, having put aside the spitting deliveries, the two had added 55 runs and more importantly played out 22.1 overs.
——Agencies