India vs Sri Lanka: Visitors need discipline, not flash, to put up a fight in Bangalore

With a brisk intensity, Sri Lanka’s cricketers sweated in the mild chill of the Bangalore evening. The batsmen seemed intent on polishing their defensive bearings, a letdown in the first Test in Mohali, as well as leaving the ball more judiciously outside the off-stump.
Fast bowlers probed the fuller-length more assiduously, fielders hurtled around for low, sharp catches; spinner Lasith Embuldeniya had an extended session of bowling on a specific spot, fuller length just outside the off-stump. Accuracy, after all, was an elusive virtue for the Lankans in Mohali.

The gulf of quality between the two sides was so pronounced that a quick turnaround looks unforeseeable. But the pink-ball (they even played football with a pink one), day-night quotient might just reduce the gap, give them a slight wriggle room to at least avoid a Mohali-like thrashing.
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Both teams have played three day-and-night Tests each, both have won two and lost one apiece. But intrigue still lingers, as Jasprit Bumrah said in the press conference. “All our career, from childhood to international matches, we have been using the red ball.
We have not played many pink ball matches and whatever we have played, they were all in different conditions, so no parameter can be set on the adjustments required,” he explained. From the body cycle that’s programmed for morning-to-evening Test day grinds to a departure from conventional beliefs like swing in the second session than in the first, they are forced to make subtle adjustments.

Batsmen have found trouble watching the seam position that sometimes gets lost under the lights. When fielding, the ball comes faster than what you perceive, hitting the hands harder too. “It is still a fairly new concept for all of us and we are trying to learn with every Test,” Bumrah.
But as much inexperience and uncertainty could — but not definitely — reduce the yawning gap between the sides, Sri Lanka need to upgrade their processor. A variety of other factors too have to align. But there is a ray of hope, at least.
Man of hope
Suranga Lakmal in action. (PTI)
Suranga Lakmal would hope to make his international farewell a grand one. An underestimated swing-seam proposition — mostly due to his ungainly average of 36 — he could be a handful if the ball begins to move around, under lights or not. His swing he coxes is subtler than lavish, often just enough to kiss the edge. The seam-movement is noticeable only on repeat viewing. He has relished bowling with the pink ball (13 wickets at 17.5).
On bone-dry surfaces, he could sometimes be wasteful, and even redundant. But give him a hint of assance, he feeds off like a predator on prey. Some of the Indian batsmen would. Five years ago, on a green track at the Eden Gardens, he cut a swathe through the top-order. He has been Lanka’s spearhead overseas, with five-fors in Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, West Indies and New Zealand, and he would want to wind his career down on a high.
Needs support cast
To say Sri Lanka bowlers were erratic is an understatement. They were lless, bereft of both sharpness and control, and couldn’t work up an iota of pressure on the Indian batsmen. In that sense, the absence of Dushmantha Chameera (ankle pain) and Lahiru Kumara (hamstring) would not be felt, but more verve would be expected of left-arm seamer Vishwa Fernando, who is slippery and dangerous when he is at his best.
Left-arm seamers have embarrassed both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in recent times, but for that Fernando has to be a yard quicker, more accurate and seam the ball back into their pads. He managed all those sporadically, but needs to manage that on a more consent basis.
Should they replace him with another seamer, one-Test-old Chamika Karunaratne could get a look-in. He could shore up the batting depth too. What would hurt Sri Lanka more is the ineptness of their spinners. They no longer churn out Muralis and Heraths. Not even Dharmasenas or Pereras.

While Embuldeniya is touted as a talent, and he surely exudes potential, as of now he looks uncut and unable to manage the workload for the whole. At Mohali, he was incisive in the first session, but got tired thereafter, and lost his drift. To dribute the workload, they might include another left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama.
Batsmen show up
The lone voice of resance, Pathum Nissanka, is out injured. But one of the experienced Dinesh Chandimal or Kusal Mendis would return. On paper, they don’t look as feeble a batting line-up as they projected themselves in Mohali.

There is experience — Angelo Mathews is seven short of 100, Dimuth Karunaratne is a batter of 75, fellow opener Lahiru Kumara has played 43, Chandimal 64, Mendis 47 and Dhananjaya de Silva 39. Most of them, on their given day, are capable of turbocharging an innings, only that their efforts have come up woefully short. But to survive Bangalore, or make a contest out of the game, they need to produce, a collective, concerted effort, more discipline than flash. And a lot of the intensity they showed at the nets on Friday.