After suffering a shocking loss in the ODI series and playing the chasing game for the majority of time on the first four days of the only Test, Sri Lanka had their task cut out when they began the fifth day on 170 for 3 in pursuit of a daunting 388 on Tuesday (July 18). The odds were firmly stacked against Sri Lanka. No team had chased down 388 or more ever in Asia before and with Zimbabwe boasting four spinners in their ranks, the island nation faced an uphill task to save the match, let alone winning it on a deteriorating fifth-day pitch.
However, led by Niroshan Dickwella’s 81-run knock and Asela Gunaratne’s unbeaten knock of 80, the hosts chased down the total with quite ease in the end. They had not begun the day in a way they would have wanted as Graeme Cremer dismissed both the overnight batsmen inside the first hour of the play but the Dickwella and Gunaratne set the platform with an 121-run partnership before the latter and Dilruwan Perera (29) took the team over line by sharing an unbeaten partnership of 67 runs.
Speaking after the match, Sri Lanka skipper Dinesh Chandimal revealed how confident Gunaratne was before the start of the day’s play.
“I told Asela this morning, ‘You’re going to get a hundred today’. But very confidently, Asela said to me, ‘No Chandi, there won’t be a reason for me to get a 100. I’ll get 70 and win the game.’ That’s the kind of faith I expect from my players. There’s a chance he might not have been able to do that today, but the way he spoke, even I became confident as a captain that we could win this match. Those are good things. I’m really happy that I have players like that,” Chandimal said.
“I’m very glad a player like Asela is in the team. He’s a cushion for any captain or team. If he bowls, he gets the wickets the team needs. I’m very happy he’s in the team. He has performed his responsibilities well. I’m hoping for those things from him in the future as well,” he added.
Chandimal further said his team was not looking to play defensive to draw the game.
“What we talked yesterday was playing our own game as batsmen. We know that it was tough for us to bat out the time and draw the match. If we tried that, it was likely we’d lose. So we said: play your own game. As a captain I told them that I’d take the responsibility for any mistakes, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Kusal Mendis, Dimuth Karunaratne and Upul Tharanga played well. Then at the end, Asela and Niroshan Dickwella were excellent,” Chandimal noted.
The newly-appointed Sri Lanka Test captain concluded by saying that the win against Zimbabwe has given his team the confidence for the upcoming three-match series against world number one side India.
“What we wanted was this win. The players’ mental state is in a good place. The Indian series is a big challenge. We should go for every game with a mentality to win every game,” he concluded.