Mahela's magical double ton flattens India

The third day of the Ahmedabad Test had Denagamage Proboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene written all over it. The former Lankan skipper, with a sparkling unbeaten 204, batted his team to a commanding 165-run lead over India, as the visitors finished the day at 594 for 5.

The former Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene, with a sparkling unbeaten 204, batted his team to a commanding 165-run lead over India. © AFP

It’s not often that one gets to witness a batsman dominating Indian bowling attack in their own backyard with such authority and audacity. And Mahela did just that; he batted like a dream and scored a double century that’ll remain etched in the memory for a long time to come. The innings was as beautiful in its conception as it was in its execution.

Having earlier scored five double centuries, he knew a thing or two to build such magnificent innings. When the bowlers bowled a beauty, he showed complete respect; but when they erred, he punished them with glorious drives, cuts, pulls and every other authentic cricketing shot imaginable. And in between, he bled them with intelligently placed singles and twos. What’s even more baffling, he’s not done yet.

The prolific batsman was wonderfully supported by Prasanna Jayewardene, who played a perfect foil to his senior partner with a patient unbeaten 84. Mahela batted for 339 balls for his 204, his sixth double century, and in the process the duo notched up yet another mammoth partnership of 216 for the sixth wicket.

The wheels of Indian bowling attack has already come off and in the first session of day-four it may probably be lowered to its grave. Barring the aggressive bowling from the Indian seamers in the final session, the bowling attack looked quite pedestrian throughout the day and so were Dhoni’s captaincy and his field placements. Both Dhoni and his bowlers need must think out of the box.

Leg-spinner Amit Mishra persisted with the leg-stump line and the batsmen kept padding most of them. It was only the odd one that spun and caused some discomfort to the batsmen. One such occasion was when the ball sharply turned, kissed Prasanna’s arm-guard and flew past Dravid at slip. 

The duo of Mahela and Prasanna notched up yet another mammoth partnership of 216 for the sixth wicket. © AFP

When Dhoni’s ultra-defensive approach failed to bring India the desired results, the skipper turned to the most experienced player of his team to fetch some good fortune. Sachin Tendulkar turned his golden arm over and even got his leg-spinners to turn, but without any success.

With eight overs to go for the day, Zaheer brought back some freshness into the bowling attack after 27 long and draining overs of spin. He looked his usual charged-up self, as he bowled a beautiful over to the well-set Mahela batting at 187. He produced a variety of deliveries — from well-directed bouncers to the ones that jagged back sharply into the batsmen, but was unlucky to get any breakthrough.

Ishant came back from the other end and started the spell with a lovely full-length delivery, which wrapped Prasanna on the pad but he survived the shout. The 21-year-old pacer also bowled a sharp yorker, but was beautifully dug out by Mahela.

Earlier, Mahela Jayawardene and Samaraweera carried on the good work of the top order batsmen with a 100-run stand in the first session. Samaraweera continued his consistent form with another fluent half-century, which came with a back-foot punch past the cover fence. In turn, Jayawardene soon followed suit as he reached his fifty with a late-cut off Harbhajan.

Ishant bowled an impressive spell, mixing his deliveries intelligently. Apart from bringing the ball into the right-handers, the pacer kept bowling the straighter one every now and then to beat the batsmen regularly.

Then out of nowhere, he pitched a perfect bouncer that proved too good for Samaraweera (70). His pull shot was brilliantly caught by Yuvraj Singh at the short square-leg position — it was the third wicket off the bouncer for the Indian pacers. The solid 138-run stand between Mahela and Samaraweera ended with Sri Lanka 94 behind India’s 426.

The Indians made further inroad at the stroke of lunch, when the dangerous-looking Angelo Matthews was dismissed by Harbhajan Singh. Gautam Gambhir took a good catch at forward short leg, lunging to his right to send back the young all-rounder. At lunch, Lanka were 375 for 5.

On the whole, the Indian bowlers, especially the spinners had a horrible day at work, as they just didn’t seem to have any answer to the single-mindedness of the Sri Lankan batsmen, who milked them for 316 runs in the 90 overs, losing just two wickets.