India dominated Sri Lanka in the first of the two Test matches last week and they will be expected to do just that again and win the series in style when the two sides meet in a day-night match in Bangalore on Saturday.
Sri Lanka have started the World Test Championship cycle pretty well but another defeat here will undo a lot of that hard work so they will be eager to avoid that. It isn’t going to be easy though against an India team with the bit between their teeth.
India
We are getting used to India just dominating Test matches on home soil. They have been doing it for so long that it is almost to be expected now. The worrying thing for Sri Lanka and any Test side coming to this part of the world anytime soon is that they seemingly don’t even need to be at their strongest in terms of personnel to win matches well. Conditions generally suit the Indians but there is nothing wrong with home advantage. This lot certainly know how to use it.
It is their bowlers who do more damage than their batters. The pitches rarely sit conducive to the 500+ scores that we saw from India a decade or so ago but quite often teams struggle to score that many against them in two innings. We saw evidence of that in the opening match of the series last week and the bowlers will be expected to be just as dominant here. The batters will know tougher challenges await them so the chance to find form here is helpful.
Sri Lanka
I don’t think too many expected Sri Lanka to beat India in this series but I think their supporters are entitled to be a little disappointed at quite how emphatically they were blown away in that opening match. These are conditions that Sri Lanka should be capable of surviving in at the very least when they have the bat in hand but they were all at sea and the outcome was a formality from a fairly early stage it has to be said.
I didn’t think the Sri Lanka bowlers were quite as bad as the score suggested in that opening game but they let a couple of batters get away from them and they just couldn’t reel the ascendency back in their favour. It wasn’t helped that their batters gave them nothing to work with so all in all it was a match to forget for the tourists. They will hope to do much better here but against a pink ball they might actually be even more up against it.
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Team News
India could welcome Axar Patel back for this match if they want to keep with a three spinner attack. If in the unlikely event they want another seamer then Mohammad Siraj could get a start on what is his home IPL ground.
Sri Lanka have got all sorts of problems with injuries with Pathum Missanka, Lahiru Kamara and Dushmantha Chameera all sidelined for this match. They do have Kusal Mendis back and Chamika Karunaratne is also expected to start.
Betting
Lasith Embuldeniya didn’t have much of an impact in the opening match of the series and I don’t expect his impression on this game to be much stronger either. This pitch is expected to assist the spinners but he doesn’t do a lot with the ball and he is up against some seriously good batters. He bowled almost 50 overs in the first Test and picked up a couple of wickets, although one of them was Virat Kohli which he’ll remember for a while.
You would have to think considering the gulf in class between these two sides in that opening match that there is a good chance India will only bat once in this match so covering a performance line of 85.5 points isn’t going to be easy for the spinner. It isn’t like Embuldeniya is a handy batter or a decent fielder so he’ll need to get most of his points with the ball and if India do only bat once then asking him to get half the wickets, if indeed they are bowled out, feels like a big ask. I’ll take the under.
Tips
Back L.Embuldeniya’s Performance – Under 85.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with Bet365
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