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Wellalage, Asalanka headline Sri Lanka’s spin ambush
On a sluggish surface with sharp turn and variable bounce, Sri Lanka’s spinners led by young Dunith Wellalage made merry to bundle out India for an underwhelming total of 213. The left-arm spinner snared the first five wickets to fall and the part-time spin of Charith Asalanka accounted for four scalps as India’s innings was derailed by the spin choke.
The start was contrastingly different as Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill had gotten India off to another strong start in the first PowerPlay. In hindsight, Sri Lankan captain Dasun Shanaka possibly erred by bowling just two overs of spin in the first ten overs. The overs from the seamers were wayward and it allowed Rohit in particular to get off to a flier. The Indian captain looked in ominous touch and stroked a typically effortlessly six to bring up 10000 ODI runs, thereby becoming the second fastest to achieve the feat in the format.
At 80/0, it seemed like India were cruising towards posting yet another big score in the tournament. Things changed dramatically on the introduction of Wellalage who exploited the surface from the get-go with his disciplined approach. He stuck to the basics and bowled wicket-to-wicket, leaving the rest to the pitch. And the track did respond as he cleaned up Gill with a ripper in his very first over. Virat Kohli fell shortly, chipping a dolly to short mid-wicket while Rohit was undone by a slider that kept very low. From 80/0, they had fallen to 91/3. It was just the beginning.
KL Rahul looked confident after his comeback century in the previous game and started positively. He was probably the only batter who looked comfortable against Wellalage but the latter had the last laugh, forcing Rahul to gift the simplest of return catches. Ishan Kishan never looked in and had a very scratchy innings in the middle. Seeing the amount of turn on a slowing surface, Shanaka brought on more spin. Dhananjaya de Silva got some overs and Asalanka also was given a chance to roll his arm over.
Wellalage duly completed his fifer by producing a peach to sign off his spell, Hardik Pandya the victim. Asalanka followed up the good work with more disciplined bowling as India kept losing wickets. If not for Axar Patel’s cameo at the end and his 27-run last-wicket stand with Mohammed Siraj, India would have fallen well below the 200-run mark. Asalanka had a chance of picking up the second fifer of the game but he wasn’t given a tenth over. Maheesh Theekshana duly picked up the final wicket to close out the innings. There was a slight rain delay after 47 overs but no overs were lost on resumption.
This is the first instance of India losing all their ten wickets in an ODI to spinners.
Brief scores:
India 213 in 49.1 overs (Rohit Sharma 53; Dunith Wellalage 5-40, Charith Asalanka 4-18) vs Sri Lanka
(Cricbuzz)