Seldom have we seen a visiting side dominate the first day of a series like India did on the opening day of the first Test of the ongoing tour of Sri Lanka.
After having opted to bat, India lost opener Abhinav Mukund cheaply, but were put back on the rails through a free-flowing innings from Shikhar Dhawan and his record second-wicket stand wicket partnership with Cheteshwar Pujara.
India went onto record their highest score on the opening day of an overseas Test.
‘Grab the opportunity when it presents itself’ is one of the often-heard statements in the context of sport. At the Galle International Stadium on Wednesday, Dhawan received an opportunity, and he grabbed it with both hands.
After being called up to the Test team only because Murali Vijay was unavailable for the series due to an injury, Dhawan answered the call in style, registering his highest score in Test cricket.
The left-hander from Delhi was handed a reprieve early on in his innings. He was put down on 31. The Delhi lad made Sri Lanka pay by adding a further 159 runs to put India in the driver’s seat.
While the quantum of runs by itself should make one stand and take note, the manner in which Dhawan scored those runs made a huge impact. He respected the conditions and the opposition early on and began his innings the conventional way.
But once he had his eye in, and perhaps knowing lady luck was smiling on him, he switched gears and started to play a few more strokes. His shot selection and footwork were excellent. He played the sweep shots to good effect, and used his feet to get to the pitch of the ball against the spinners.
What a glance at the scorecard will not tell you is how well he applied himself and how smartly he constructed his innings.
Until his dismissal just prior to the tea break, Dhawan was always on the lookout for runs – be it by picking up singles or through finding the fence – and he had batted out only one maiden over in his entire innings.
There are knocks that grind the opposition and then there are knocks that demolish the opposition bowlers. Dhawan’s knock on Wednesday was the latter. Coming into this series, there were questions if Sri Lanka had an attack to pick up 20 wickets. Dhawan’s knock would have only shattered the morale of the home team bowlers.
Dhawan dominated all the five bowlers Sri Lanka employed, but the telling statistic from his knock is that he maintained a 100 per cent control fact against Rangana Herath – Sri Lanka’s stand-in captain and the leader of the bowling attack – and scored against him at a strike rate of 150.0.
After this knock at Galle, one imagines that Dhawan will displace Abhinav Mukund as the reserve opener in the Indian squad.
Dhawan received great support from Cheteshwar Pujara at the other end, and the pair were involved in a partnership of 253 runs – India’s highest second wicket stand in Tests against Sri Lanka and India’s second-best second wicket stand in overseas Tests.
Credit to Pujara to not be influenced by how freely Dhawan was scoring at the other end, but instead stick to what he does best. It is very easy to get carried away watching a batsman score freely at the other end, believe there is no sting in the attack, and take things a little easy.
But Pujara was not influenced one bit, and played his natural game. In the second wicket stand, while Dhawan scored in excess of 70 per cent of the runs and scored them at quicker than a run-a-ball, Pujara was happy being the second-fiddle and gave the Sri Lankan bowlers a complete workout.
In the final session, Pujara reached the three-figure mark – his twelfth Test century. When stumps were drawn, Pujara was unbeaten on 144 and Ajinkya Rahane was looking good on 39. Both batsmen will look to convert it to big scores on Day two.
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