Lunch Sri Lanka 138 for 5 (Mahela 26*, Prasanna 2*) trail India 642 (Gambhir 167, Dravid 144, Sehwag 137, Herath 5-121) by 504 runs
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out
The prodigal son Sreesanth returned in style with a three-wicket haul to rattle Sri Lanka on the third day of the second Test in Kanpur. For nine successive overs, Sreesanth ran in hard, got close to the stumps, hit the deck and found enough life in a slow pitch to leave Sri Lanka struggling to avoid follow on.
Green Park was the venue where Sreesanth played his last Test 19 months ago before he disappeared from the sports pages and made occasional appearances on Page 3. Today, he stormed back, lifting India with a spell that read: 9-2-28-3.
It was a classical spell of seam bowling: Sreesanth's pace wasn't frightening (135 kmph was the average), there were no fiery bouncers and he didn't swing it around corners, but what he did was land ball after ball on a probing line and length and cut it either way just enough to test the batsmen. He had his share of luck too - two batsmen played on off the inside edge - and Sri Lanka's batsmen didn't tailor their techniques to the demands of the pitch.
Instead of playing as close to the body as possible on a pitch with variable bounce, the batsmen erred by playing away. Tharanga Paranavitana was set up by a bouncer that crashed into his shoulder before he pushed at one cutting away from him. Kumar Sangakkara, who faced 24 deliveries from Zaheer Khan today, fell in the first over he faced off Sreesanth. Sangakkara played out three straight deliveries but was lured into a cover drive by a full wide one and ended up dragging it on to his stumps. Thilan Samaraweera was the next to go, pushing hard and early at a length delivery cutting away from him.
With Sreesanth, as always, it's not just his bowling but the entire package of quirky traits that catches attention. Today, those signature self-exhortations at the top of the run-up were not seen too often, nor was there any special celebration after a wicket.
Not everything went Sreesanth's way though. He produced an edge from his best delivery but it didn't get him a wicket. Mahela Jayawardene, on zero, pushed at one that cut away late and got an edge but neither MS Dhoni nor Sachin Tendulkar at first slip went for the catch. It was the keeper's catch. Jayawardene got another reprieve on 25 when he edged a late cut off Harbhajan Singh to first slip where Rahul Dravid couldn't hold on to a sharp chance. Harbhajan, who had Angelo Matthews bowled playing down the wrong line, was in the middle of a probing spell but the two Jayawardenes survived.
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