Tea B>West Indies 499 all and 65 unbeaten (Campbell 33*, King 31*) need 237 runs to win Sri Lanka 549 on December 9 and 251 on December 9 (Chandimal 71, Kamindu 44, Dhananjaya 34, Alzarri 2-44)
There were eyebrows raised in some quarters by Sri Lanka’s decision not to call the match during the lunch break, but given the relative ease with which John Campbell and Brandon King operated for the rest of the session, it may have made sense to push the cap above 300 – and in turn eat up the roughly 25 minutes of play that would otherwise have been afforded to the West Indies.
Despite some variable bounce, Sri Lanka’s seamers – and Prabath Jayasuriya – were unable to cause much discomfort to the West Indies openers, who seemed in no hurry to chase down the target of 302 set by Sri Lanka but nevertheless still advanced to 65 after 23 overs.
With just a session of play remaining, this match is now heading towards a draw, leaving both sides sharing WTC points – although more important for the hosts, who are not in the final WTC contention this cycle, is a rare series win.
Only three overs were played after the lunch break before Sri Lanka decided to declare, with a couple of strong hits from Milan Ratnayake taking the lead past the 300-run mark.
During the chase, Campbell and King had little to worry about. There was some variable bounce late on on a very good batting surface, but nothing that the West Indies didn’t have much trouble with.
The closest Sri Lanka came to a breakthrough was when Jayasuriya trapped King for lbw after the right-hander missed, only for DRS to show the ball bouncing off the top of middle stump. A little later, Jayasuriya again caught King in front of the stumps, but this time umpire Ahsan Raza remained unmoved. King survived after showing the umpire’s signal to hit the wickets.
Earlier in the morning session, Sri Lanka did their best to put themselves in a position to safely bring West Indies back into the fray as they posted a strike rate of 5.79 during the 24-over session. They lost six wickets but it was an enterprising period of play in the face of a defensive effort from the hosts, whose seamers cut lines wide of the offside combined with a stacked 7-2 offside and spinners sticking to leg stump lines.
In this context, each of the wickets that fell was inconsistent with how the previous four days had unfolded, as the restless nature of Sri Lanka’s approach reflected more in the final overs of the 50-over game than in the final day of the two-match Test series. Remarkably, Dinesh Chandimal reached his 36th fifty in Test matches and third on tour, but that is little consolation as the match now looks destined for a stalemate.