Virender Sehwag hit a typically robust unbeaten 97 off 87 balls to lead India’s reply after Thilan Samaraweera’s century lifted Sri Lanka to 425 in the third and final Test yesterday.
Sehwag, who made 109 in the first Test and 99 in the second, continued his brilliant form to lift India to 180-2 by stumps on an absorbing third day’s play at the P. Sara Oval.
Sachin Tendulkar, the world’s leading run-getter, marked his record 169th Test appearance with an unbeaten 40 in an unbroken 88-run third wicket stand with Sehwag.
Top-ranked India, seeking a series-leveling victory after losing the first Test, resume on the third day 245 runs behind with eight wickets in hand.
Sri Lanka’s first innings prospered through Samaraweera’s 12th century, before the hosts were all out midway through the post-lunch session.
Samaraweera, a 33-year-old veteran of 60 Tests, remained unbeaten on 137 after reaching his century in the last over before lunch, courtesy of an overthrow that fetched the batsman five runs.
SPECTACULAR ASSAULT
Sehwag ensured India did not lag behind as he launched a spectacular assault on the Sri Lankan bowling with 17 hits to the fence.
The swashbuckling opener, playing his 79th match, became the sixth Indian batsman to complete 7,000 Test runs when he reached 70 with a single off Lasith Malinga.
More than 4,000 of those runs had come in fours, having hit his 1,000th boundary earlier in the innings.
Murali Vijay contributed 14 in an opening stand of 49 with Sehwag when he mistimed a drive off Malinga and gave Ajantha Mendis an easy catch in the covers.
Rahul Dravid made 23 when he was trapped leg before wicket in Angelo Mathews’ first over to reduce India to 92-2, but Tendulkar and Sehwag settled in to deny Sri Lanka further success.
The pair played both pace and spin comfortably, with Tendulkar matching Sehwag’s stroke-play with five well-timed boundaries.
Earlier, the overnight pair of Samaraweera and Mathews batted for an hour to take their fifth-wicket partnership to 89 runs, before India finally broke through.
Mathews, who made 45, was trapped leg before wicket by Pragyan Ojha, giving the Hyderabad left-arm spinner his third wicket in the innings.
Ojha struck again six overs later when Prasanna Jayawardene, who made 9, missed an attempted sweep and was caught plumb in front of the wicket.
QUICK WICKETS
Sri Lanka, who went to lunch on 369-6, lost two quick wickets after the resumption.
Suraj Randiv top-edged a sweep off Sehwag, while leg-spinner Amit Mishra held a return catch from Malinga to claim his first wicket after 37 overs that cost 130 runs.
Mishra, who replaced the injured Harbhajan Singh, finished with expensive figures of 1-140 from 42 overs.
Ojha was the lone Indian bowler to take advantage of a wicket assisting turn and bounce to return with 4-115. Seamer Ishant Sharma claimed 3-72, including the last two wickets.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier