Jeffrey Vandersay‘s six-wicket haul and a batting rearguard from Dunith Wellalage and Kamindu Mendis helped Sri Lanka beat India by 32 runs in the second ODI and take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series. Jeffrey Vandersay, a man who had made his debut in December 2015 but only played 22 ODIs before this one, a leg spinner for long consigned to understudy status, was only called into the squad on the eve of this match thanks to Wanindu Hasaranga’s hamstrings.
Jeffrey Vandersay ripped through the heart of India’s batting, taking out Rohit, Shubman Gill, Shivam Dube, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul in the space of 29 balls from his end as 97 for no loss became 147 for 6. In the end, India’s spinners – including Rohit who bowled two overs – combined for figures of 6 for 112 in 31 overs. Their three seamers – including Dube who bowled two overs – ended up with 1 for 111 from 19. Sri Lanka had five spinners to India’s three-and-a-bit, and that ended up having a massive influence on the result.
Pitch and Toss
It’s a very warm afternoon. The breeze that is blowing across is warm. We have moved a couple of strips across. The pitch is dry. Very similar to the one we played on a couple of days ago. The gaps between the cracks are pretty wide. There’s going to be a lot of crumbling. Captain winning the toss would want to bat first. The key as a batter is to hit the gaps and run, wear the opposition down suggests Russell Arnold in his pitch report.
Charith Asalanka Sri Lanka’s skipper won the toss and chose to bat and made two changes in the playing 11 bringing in Kamindu Mendis and Jeffrey Vandersay for Mohammad Shiraj and Wanindu Hasaranga. Indian skipper Rohit Sharma bowling first decided to go with same playing XI in the match.
Sri Lanka struggle to find form in the early stages of the play.
Earlier in the day, Sri Lanka lost in-form Pathum Nissanka off the first ball of the match to an outswinger from Mohammed Siraj but Avishka Fernando (40) and Kusal Mendis (30) added 74 runs for the second wicket to steady the hosts with a partnership that had to cautiously tread past Siraj’s five-over opening spell.
The partnership looked far from settled even at its peak, as you would expect on a surface helping the spinners from the get-go, and took Washington Sundar nine balls into his spell to break the stand with a leading edge from Fernando that popped right back to the spinner. Sundar would follow up with Mendis’s wicket in his next over, sending Sri Lanka back into recovery mode with two new batters at the crease.
Sadeera Samarawickrama and Charith Asalanka didn’t have it easy against the Indian spinners and both perished to them; Samarawickrama mistimed a slog against Axar when trying to break the shackles whereas Asalanka was caught off-guard by a turning-bouncing delivery and offered a simple catch to short third man. Sandwiched between the two wickets was a strike by Kuldeep Yadav, who was introduced into the attack only in the 20th over and bowled a miserly first five overs before being rewarded with the wicket of Janith Liyanage in his sixth.
Sri Lanka were going nowhere. Avishka Fernando and Kusal Mendis had put on 74 for the second wicket after Mohammed Siraj had kicked off the match by sending Nissanka back with a perfectly pitched outswinger, but Sri Lanka had lost 5 for 62 thereafter.
This was the sort of pitch where the danger of Axar’s straighter one was extremely pronounced, because he was frequently getting the ball to rip past the right-hander’s outside edge. He didn’t have the luck to go with how well he was bowling, but the wickets were coming at the other end, with Washington starting Sri Lanka’s slide by having Avishka caught off the leading edge before having Kusal lbw missing a sweep off a full ball.
Kamindu Mendis and Dunith Wellalage powers Sri Lanka to 240 in 50 overs
At 136/6 at the end of 35 overs, Sri Lanka looked in a bit of bother but found unlikely heroes in Dunith Wellalage (39) and Kamindu Mendis (40), the pair frustrating India towards the end and mounting the total past 200. It of course didn’t help that Mendis was dropped on 11 by Shivam Dube.
Wellalage took his time but once in, he delighted with a few boundaries, including a four and six off Axar in the 44th over and six off Siraj in the next. He was caught by Dube at short third man but not before he had managed to dent India. Mendis was run out only off the penultimate ball of the innings, thanks to a sharp effort from Shreyas Iyer.
Mendis and Akila Dananjaya managed a few boundaries in the last couple of overs as 79 runs were scored in the final 10. The seamers bowled their 19 overs for 111/1, more than offsetting the brilliant effort by the spinners who combined to pick 112/6 in their 31 overs, and the extra runs hurt the visitors in the end.
The runs came in a trickle thereafter. When Kamindu, batting unusually low at No. 8, joined Wellalage, Sri Lanka had scored seven runs in their last 4.5 overs while losing Janith Liyanage and Asalanka.
But Wellalage batted with freedom, and found the bit of luck that any significant knock needs in such conditions, his – and Sri Lanka’s – first six coming off a miscue that just cleared long-on, and another mis-hit off the next ball landing in no-man’s land beyond midwicket running back. Then he struck the sweetest hit of the innings, driving a good-length ball from Siraj over the wide long-off boundary.
Kamindu showed plenty of smarts as well as the rare ability to read Kuldeep out of his hand, bringing up his first boundary with a perfectly executed reverse-sweep, but he was definitely the support act in the seventh-wicket stand, contributing 26 off 35 while Wellalage made 39 off 33.
The return of the fast bowlers in the end overs, though, freed Kamindu up, and India’s tempers frayed a little as he and Dananjaya gave Sri Lanka the finish they desired, putting on 31 off 22 balls. When Dananjaya launched Siraj down the ground for four in the 49th over, the fast bowler followed up with a bouncer garnished with verbal’s.
That India would be chasing 241 had seemed unlikely when Kuldeep Yadav and Washington, India’s most successful bowlers, had bowled back-to-back wicket maidens in the 34th and 35th overs of Sri Lanka’s innings to leave them at 136 for 6. Opting to bat first, Sri Lanka were once reeling at 136/6 when Wellalage and Mendis added 72 runs for the seventh wicket and took the side to a very competitive total of 240/9 on another slow, low pitch at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, in what was the 150th ODI at the venue.
India raced to power packed start due to Rohit Sharma’s blistering innings.
India weren’t quite able to chase a target of 231 the other day and this time, they had another 10 runs to chase on what was a relatively slower pitch. So it wasn’t a surprise that Rohit Sharma came out all guns blazing and racked up a 29-ball fifty, his fourth inside the first 10 overs of an ODI.
Along with Gill, Rohit Sharma added 97 runs for the first wicket, hitting 5 fours and 4 sixes and taking a major chunk off the target. But once the India captain fell to a reverse sweep, India slid into a massive collapse once again and lost six wickets for 50 runs. All six wickets were to Jeffrey Vandersay in what was the first instance of the first six wickets falling to a spinner.
The surfeit of spin didn’t seem like that good an idea when India’s chase began, with Wellalage, Dananjaya and Kamindu showing a distinct lack of control early on, and Rohit taking full advantage of the first-powerplay field restrictions. These three spinners bowled six wicketless overs between them and conceded 53 as India raced to 76 for no loss in the first ten.
Rohit Sharma scored 51 of those runs, bringing up his half-century off just 29 balls, getting there in the 10th over with a carved six over cover off Kamindu. He had moved to 64 off 43 when he tasted the flip side of the aggression that had brought him all his runs.
Jeffrey Vandersay run riots India’s batting with 6 wickets alongside Charith Asalanka to set up famous Sri Lanka win.
Jeffrey Vandersay extracted a bit of extra bounce, and the switch-sweep ended up in the hands of the diving Pathum Nissanka at backward point.
Having got that opening, Jeffrey Vandersay took control. Between Gill top-edging a cover drive and Rahul bottom-edging one onto his stumps, Jeffrey Vandersay showed the virtue of attacking the stumps, with natural variation off the surface allowing him to test both edges persistently. Kohli and Iyer were both lbw to balls that hurried on with the angle after drifting in through the air, and the left-handed Dube was lbw to one that ripped in while keeping low.
Before they knew it, India were in the mire. Axar and Washington held on for 60 balls, calmly but not without moments of fortune, before Asalanka got the former caught and bowled with one that stuck in the pitch. Then Washington, who had just survived a Dananjaya legbreak that burst past his inside edge and bounced over the stumps, was lbw to an Asalanka delivery that went with the arm from round the wicket; his wicket was the fourth of five lbws in India’s innings, to go with one bowled.
Gill and Shivam Dube perished in the same over, the former to a one-handed stunner from Mendis in the slips. Dube, in turn, was trapped lbw in front by a legbreak. Ten balls later, Virat Kohli was also pinned in front by a flipper, the first time the veteran batter had fallen lbw to a spinner in back-to-back innings.
Jeffrey Vandersay completed his maiden five-wicket haul by trapping Shreyas Iyer with a googly, becoming only the second leg spinner to pick five wickets against India in ODIs. Jeffrey Vandersay then went on to pick his sixth when KL Rahul chopped on and finished with figures of 6 for 33.
Washington Sundar and Axar Patel then steadied India with a 38-run stand but Charith Asalanka sent both those batters back in the pavilion in consecutive overs, all but sealing the match for his side. India were bowled out for 208 in 42.2 overs, losing nine wickets to spin.
Sri Lanka were desperate to go one better, they finally did, and their hero wasn’t even part of their original squad. Jeffrey Vandersay, a man who had made his debut in December 2015 but only played 22 ODIs before this one, a leg spinner for long consigned to understudy status, was only called into the squad on the eve of this match thanks to Wanindu Hasaranga’s hamstrings.
And Jeffrey Vandersay ripped through the heart of India’s batting, taking out Rohit, Shubman Gill, Shivam Dube, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul in the space of 29 balls from his end as 97 for no loss became 147 for 6.
Where India had recovered from a not-dissimilar collapse on Friday, they couldn’t quite manage it this time. Axar Patel and Washington Sundar brought them to within 56 runs of their target with a 38-run stand for the seventh wicket, with Jeffrey Vandersay mostly out of the attack in this time. But just when India threatened to inch ahead, there was another flashback to Friday.
Charith Asalanka had taken three wickets with his part-time offspin then, and now he brought himself back and took out both Axar and Washington in successive overs, and that was that, more or less. With the conditions being what they were, Sri Lanka had packed their spin attack for this game, picking five including the ambidextrous Kamindu Mendis who came in for the seamer Mohamed Shiraz.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Rohit Sharma the loosing Indian skipper said : When you lose a game, everything hurts. It’s not just about those 10 overs. You have to play consistent cricket and we failed to do that today. Little disappointed but these things happen. You got to adapt what’s in front of you. With left-right, we felt it’ll be easier to rotate strike. Credit to Jeffrey, he got six wickets. The reason I got 65 is because of the way I batted.
When I am batting like that, there’s a lot of risks taken. If you don’t cross the line, you always feel disappointed. I don’t want to compromise on my intent. We understand nature of this surface, it gets really tough in the middle overs. You have to try to get as many as possible in the powerplay. We weren’t good enough. Don’t want to look too much into how we played. But there’ll be talks about our batting in the middle overs.
Charith Asalanka the winning Sri Lankan skipper said : I was pretty with the score. 240 was good enough. As a captain, these kind of problems (plenty of spin options) I need to have. It was an unbelievable spell by him (Vandersay). They were more than 90 runs when he came in to bowl. I am mainly a batter, I have to score runs. After that I can bowl a few overs.
Jeffrey Vandersay Player of the Match for his six wickets said : There was a lot of pressure coming into the side. I am coming out of a layoff. I had to something and it is easier to take credit. I want to give credit to the batters as well. They put on 240 runs and that helped me to bowl in good areas.
Hasaranga is out No. 1 spinner. I got to understand the atmosphere of the team and team balance. I have to keep pushing myself. There was assistance in the wicket, I was trying to hit the good areas. Once I got my first wicket, that built up my confidence. Fortunately, I was able to take six wickets.
Asalanka has a big smile with his arms aloft, Vandersay raises his right hand and then prays. Jayasuriya is pumped up. Time for the handshakes as Sri Lanka take a 1-0 lead. Lots of similarities to the previous match, but we have a clear winner tonight.
Opting to bat, they were in a precarious situation at 136/6, but once again Dunith Wellalage and the lower-order bailed them out of trouble to post a challenging total. In reply, captain Rohit got off the blocks quickly and notched up his second fifty of the series and once inside the first powerplay as India raced away to 76/0.
Sri Lanka outplayed India all the facets of the game today. They opted for an extra spinner and strengthened their batting which turned out to be right move. They take an unassailable lead in this 3-match series. India ought to address a few issues. They let the Sri Lankan lower-order to get to good totals in both the matches after starting well with the ball. And, their middle-order batters struggled against spin in both the ODIs even after Rohit’s quick starts.
Rohit Sharma defied conditions to an even more remarkable degree at the start of India’s chase, putting them well ahead of the asking rate with a blazing half-century. Then India collapsed against Sri Lanka’s spinners, and half their side was back in the dressing room before they had got to 140.
All these things happened in the first ODI on Friday, and they happened again two days later as Sri Lanka chased their first win of this white-ball tour by India. They had tied the third and final T20I, only for India to claim a Super Over win. They had tied the first ODI too. Sri Lanka’s 32-run win was their first over India in an ODI since July 2021.
They had lost six straight meetings since then before Friday’s tie. Vandersay’s 6 for 33 continued a proud tradition: he became the fifth Sri Lanka bowler – after Muttiah Muralitharan, Ajantha Mendis, Angelo Mathews and Akila Dananjaya – to pick up a six-for or better in an ODI against India. The defeat ends India’s sequence of 11 consecutive bilateral ODI series wins (2+ matches) against Sri Lanka, their last loss going back to December 1997.
The Final ODI between India and Sri Lanka beginning on 7th August is now a salvage saving match for India to draw the series 1-1 aand play for pride .