Batsmen Dimuth Karunaratne (136 batting) and Angelo Mathews (28 batting) kept up the Sri Lankan fight against India, posting 302/4 in the second innings by lunch on Day-4 in the second Test here on Sunday.
After losing Malinda Pushpakumara (16) and skipper Dinesh Chandimal (2) during the morning session, Karunaratne and Mathews were unbeaten with a 61-run stand between them when the umpires called for lunch.
For India, spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja scalped one wicket each in the morning session.
Pushpakumara was batting comfortably, hitting three boundaries over the course of a patient 58-ball iniings.
But all the hard word work was undone in a moment of madness when the right-hander decided to reverse his stance to a delivery from Ashwin. His attempted shot missed the ball completely which went on to dusturb the stumps.
Chandimal had a lucky escape off the second ball he faced when he edged an Ashwin delivery to the slips. But Ajinkya Rahane was not able to react quickly enough at first slip and the batsmen went for a couple of runs.
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But Rahane did not make any mistake in the next over, diving to his right to pull off a low catch at first slip after Jadeja managed to induce an outside edge from Chandimal.
Karunaratne and Mathews then batted patiently to frustrate the visitors till lunch.
Brief Scores:
Sri Lanka: 183 and 302/4 (Karunaratne 136 batting, Ashwin 1/106) vs India 622/9 declared.
--IANS
ajb/vt