Royal dominate, Thomian ninth wicket pair resist

142nd Battle of the Blues

Put into bat first S. Thomas’ lost eight wickets for 35 runs before the ninth wicket pair of Yasiru Rodrigo and Mahith Perera resisted the Royal attack with a dogged stand as they reached 73 for nine wickets at close on day two of the 142nd Battle of the Blues at the SSC ground on Friday.

The Sri Lanka Under-19 player Rodrigo and Perera who had only played one year of Under-15 cricket were together for more than one and half hours resisting the Royal attack. Perera faced 65 balls and scored 22 runs before becoming the fourth victim of spinner Gishan Balasooriya. Rodrigo then joined Rajindu Tilakaratne and remained unbeaten for six more overs for the Thominas to reach 97 for nine wickets at stumps.

The Thomians top order collapsed against Royal pacemen who used the conditions to good advantage. The wicket had been covered for nearly two days when weather conditions finally improved to allow the match to start at 1.00 pm on the second day. Sonal Amarasekara took a wicket each in his first three overs to give Royal a dream start. Later spinner Balasuriya took four wickets.

Rodrigo who cam to bat at the fall of the seventh wicket in the 19th over dropped anchor. He had faced 97 balls for his unbeaten 30 and had stayed at the wicket for 126 minutes when stumps were drawn on the second day.