Having taken an upper hand in the second cricket Test by earning a healthy lead, India leg spinner Amit Mishra today said that his team will now look to set a target of 350-plus for Sri Lanka.
The visitors finished day three on 70 for one in their second innings, thereby extending the overall lead to 157 runs after bowling out the hosts for 306 in their first essay.
"Anything over 350 is good. If we can make it 400, that will be good too," said Mishra after the day's play.
"Already the lead is more than 150, so another 250-330 runs will be a very good total. I think a minimum of 100 overs are needed here (to bowl out Sri Lanka again)," he added.
Sri Lanka scored 84 runs in the opening session today without losing a wicket and it seemed as if the hosts would surpass India's first innings total of 393, but Ishant Sharma (2/68) bowled well with the second new ball to bring India back into the match.
"We were not frustrated at all," said Mishra about the wicket-less morning session.
"Our plan was not to concede too many runs even if we didn't get wickets. Plan was to bowl one line to create pressure. We knew that if we got one or two wickets, we could run through them and that's what happened. As soon as we got one or two wickets, because we had not conceded a lot of runs, the pressure was on the opposition. That was our plan.
"No doubt Angelo Mathews (102) batted well to make a hundred but after that, we came back well. The way Ishant bowled with the new ball was important on a slow track. His effort in the heat -- that spell set the game up for us," he explained.
After Ishant got the breakthrough, Mishra (4/43) and R Ashwin wrapped up the tail, sharing four wickets between them.
"After an hour at the wicket it becomes good to bat. But our aim, as I said, was to bowl consistent line and length. Then three of their main batsmen were out. Our aim was to clamber on after the breakthrough. Even when we got wickets, we didn't over attack but stuck to the basics, stuck to our lines and lengths," he said.
