Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin caused a dramatic Sri Lanka collapse as India completed a crushing 278-run victory in the second Test in Colombo on Monday to level the three-match series.
Ashwin grabbed five for 42 as Sri Lanka, set an improbable victory target of 413 runs, were shot out for 134 in their second innings soon after lunch on the fifth day at the P. Sara Oval.
Leg-spinner Amit Mishra chipped in with three wickets as the hosts lost their last eight batsmen for 62 runs after resuming at 72-2, giving Virat Kohli his first win as captain in his fifth Test as leader.
A brief spell of heavy rain forced an early lunch with nine wickets down, but the weather cleared for India to finish the match in the second over after resumption.
The defeat denied retiring Sri Lankan great Kumar Sangakkara a fairytale farewell in his last international match. The left-hander was dismissed for 18 on Sunday.
India's emphatic win set the stage for an intriguing finale to the series when the third and final Test starts at the Sinhalese sports club in the Sri Lankan capital on Friday.
Opener Dimuth Karunaratne made 46, but six batsmen failed to reach double figures as Sri Lanka were bowled out in 43.4 overs.
Ashwin finished with a match-haul of seven wickets to add to the 10 he took in the first Test in Galle where Sri Lanka fought back from the brink to win by 63 runs.
Sri Lanka lost captain Angelo Mathews off the first ball of the day, edging fast bowler Umesh Yadav to stand-in wicketkeeper Lokesh Rahul, who dived to his right to hold a low catch.
First Test hero Dinesh Chandimal began by hooking seamer Ishant Sharma for a six, before he was bowled round his legs by Mishra for 15 to reduce the hosts to 91-4.
It soon became 111-6 as India grabbed two more wickets in the space of five deliveries.
Ashwin had Lahiru Thirimanne snapped up at silly point by substitute fielder Cheteshwar Pujara, and in the next over Ishant Sharma forced Jehan Mubarak to edge a catch to second slip.
The procession back to the pavilion continued when Dhammika Prasad attempted to loft Ashwin out of the ground, but only managed to top-edge a catch to Mishra at mid-on.
Sri Lanka's last recognised batsman Karunaratne was bowled by Ashwin before lunch and Mishra sealed the win by trapping both Tharindu Kaushal and Dushmantha Chameera leg-before on either side of the break.
Murali Vijay, Wriddhiman Saha ruled out
Only last week, the Indian team was busy changing reservations at Taj Samudra with Stuart Binny being flown in as an addition to the squad and Shikhar Dhawan leaving with a hand injury. And they will once again be a bother for the reception desk with Wriddhiman Saha and Murali Vijay being ruled out of the tour with hamstring injuries—one sustained the other reoccurred—and being replaced by Naman Ojha and Karun Nair.
That Saha was in trouble seemed obvious from the time he limped off the field alongside team physio Patrick Farhart. What was baffling was to see him return with India already ahead by 398, and with only Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma left in the shed. And more so as Saha looked worse for wear to even reach the other end of the pitch. It was a period where the field was spread out and singles were the only run-scoring option, much to Saha’s plight.
But now with the Bengal wicket-keeper set to return home, we are certain to witness a Test debut at the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) ground come next Friday with Ojha taking over behind the wickets.
But the question that the team management will be asking itself is how or with whom do we replace Vijay with?
The opener had suffered a hamstring strain in Chennai even before the team arrived in Sri Lanka. And he had even missed the first Test as a result. The team management were insistent that Vijay would be picked only if his hamstring had healed. To his credit, with pain or not, he did play a significant hand in India’s defining second innings total, scoring an aggressive 82 and also to add his name to the cricket trivia question that will be asked around the world in coming years—Who caught Kumar Sangakkara in his final Test innings?
With both their senior openers now on the injured list, India are left with only one top-order specialist in their mix, KL Rahul. So it is quite strange to note that the replacement coming in is a middle-order batsman, and not an opener even if it leaves the door open for Cheteshwar Pujara to make a return as opener.
