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| Wednesday, 10 March 2004 |
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Dazzling Dilshan puts Lanka in the box seat by Sa'adi Thawfeeq reporting from Galle
Tillakaratne Dilshan continued his fairytale run with the bat when he scored his third Test century to place Sri Lanka in the box seat against Australia in the first cricket Test played at the Galle International Stadium here today. Dilshan hit a sparkling 104 off 188 balls with 12 fours and a six as Sri Lanka ended the second day on 352 for six wickets in reply to Australia's first innings of 220. Sri Lanka enjoys a lead of 132 runs with four wickets standing. Since his comeback to the Test side against England at Kandy last December, this is the fourth successive occasion; Dilshan had gone past the fifty-run mark. After making an immediate impact in his introduction to Test cricket with an innings of 163 against Zimbabwe in 1999, Dilshan failed to secure a permanent place in the team until last year where he marked his return with scores of 63 and 100 against England at Kandy and followed it up 83 in the final Test at the SSC which Sri Lanka won by an innings. Endowed with strong wrists and natural timing and a sound temperament to go with it, the 27-year-old Dilshan waded into the Australian bowling reaching his fifty off 112 balls with an extra cover drive off Warne and then completing his century off a misfield at point which allowed him to scramble a single. Valuable century "I value this century more than the other two because it is against the best team in the world," said Dilshan at the end of the day. "Australia has two of the best leg spinners in the world and two of the best fast bowlers. It was not easy scoring runs against these bowlers." Dilshan's two previous centuries were against Zimbabwe at Harare in 1999 when he scored an unbeaten 163 and against England when he made exactly 100 at Kandy last December. Dilshan said that Kasprowicz and Warne were the bowlers who troubled him most. "Kasprowicz was reverse swinging the ball when I went into bat. He bowls one line consistently. Warne does a lot of things with the ball. He bowls six different balls in an over. I had to play them very carefully," said Dilshan. "I had faced Warne in a 3-day game before. I find that he is not bowling with his former rhythm. He is bowling well and it is not easy scoring runs off him. For a bowler who has taken 491 wickets I have a lot of respect for him. You have to play him with caution," he said. But caution was just another word for Dilshan the way he batted out there in the middle. He danced down the track to the spinners and hit both Warne and MacGill to all corners. Warne bowled 27 overs for the day for just one wicket and MacGill went wicketless in his 16 overs. Even approaching his hundred Dilshan didn't show any caution but displayed the same positive attitude and was lucky to be dropped at 96 when Warne at first slip failed to hold onto a thick edge that flew off his bat as he drove Kasprowicz. 'The ball is there to be hit' "It's the way I have learned to play. If the ball is there to be hit I will hit it no matter what my score is. I don't play cautiously and put unnecessary pressure on myself when I am approaching a hundred. I treat every ball on its merits. There are times it may bring about my downfall, but that's how I have learnt to play," said Dilshan.He regretted getting out in the last hour of play, but added that if Sri Lanka could extend their first innings lead to around 200-250 they had a good chance of winning the Test because the amount of help the spinners were getting out of the surface. Dilshan forged two useful partnerships during the day with Mahela Jayawardene who made a stylish 68 in 124 minutes with eight fours and captain Hashan Tillakaratne who scored 33 in almost the same period of time. Jayawardene and Dilshan put on 75 in 67 minutes for the fourth wicket and after Jayawardene had got out to an uncharacteristic cut that saw him sacrifice his wicket to Symonds at 198, Dilshan and Tillakaratne added exactly 100 in 125 minutes for the fifth wicket. Beginning the day at 81-1, Sri Lanka lost both overnight batsmen before lunch, with Kasprowicz and Gillespie picking up the wickets. Sangakkara's defensive prod with his score on 22 ended in a return catch to Kasprowiczv and Atapattu's 158 minutes of vigilance for 47 came to an end when he played on to a ball from Gillespie. The Sri Lankan vice captain struck seven fours. Samaraweera handicapped by a groin injury while fielding on the first day came to bat at the fall of the fifth wicket with a runner and by the close was unbeaten on 21 with Chandana on 20. Sri Lanka will be looking to extend their lead through this pair and the rest of a long tail when play resumes tomorrow. Lankans show how to bat Australian coach John Buchanan said: "What Sri Lanka showed today was an old form of the game and it was about batting time and they waited and waited and when they got a loose ball they were able to put it away." "Obviously the scoreboard is not exactly where we would like it to be after two days, but I am still pleased with the way we are actually playing. I am very happy the way we bowled and I really don't know whether we could have bowled much better with that attack," he said. AUSTRALIA - 1ST INNINGS 220 SRI LANKA 1ST INNINGS (overnight 81-1) M.S. Atapattu b Gillespie 47 S. T. Jayasuriya lbw b Warne 35 K. C. Sangakkara c and b Kasprowicz 22 D. P. M. Jayawardene c Hayden b Symonds 68 T. M. Dilshan c Langer b Kasprowicz 104 H. P. Tillakaratne lbw b Warne 33 T. T. Samaraweera not out 21 U. D. U. Chandana not out 20 Extras (B-2) 02 TOTAL (6 wkts at close, 115 overs, 445 mins) 352 FALL OF WICKETS: 1-53 (Jayasuriya), 2-92 (Sangakkara), 3-123 (Atapattu), 4-198 (Jayawardene), 5-298 (Tillakaratne), 6-323 (Dilshan). TO BAT: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena, W. P. U. J. C. Vaas, M. Muralitharan. BOWLING (to-date): Gillespie 21-5-52-1, Kasprowicz 23-3-56-2, Warne 32-5-103-2, Symonds 19-3-68-1, MacGill 18-3-62-0, Lehmann 2-0-9-0 |
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