Silva and Sri Lanka dominate

Despite an excellent performance by Daniel Vettori which saw him claim seven second innings wickets, New Zealand face the task of breaking a world record if they are to beat Sri Lanka in the second Test at Wellington’s Basin Reserve after Chamara Silva scored an amazing unbeaten 152 in the visitors’ second innings of 365.

Resuming on 225-5 with Silva on 79, Sri Lanka started well with Prasanna Jayawardene providing good support to his partner in a 94-run stand for the seventh wicket. That was the crucial difference between the two teams – the partnerships. When Jayawardene was eventually dismissed for 37, Chaminda Vaas took over where he left off and the two put on 88 for the seventh. Those two partnerships had taken the match from being reasonably evenly poised, at 202-5, to outright dominance by Sri Lanka at 350-7. Vettori then ran through the tail, including three wickets in four balls at one stage, and Sri Lanka were eventually all out for 365.

Silva though had played a superb innings. Coming into the match with a Test average of 0, Silva batted well in the first innings for 61 and even better in the second to lift his average into the seventies and be the first batsman in Test history to follow a pair on debut with a century in his second Test. He hit 20 fours in a huge variety of directions and was rarely troubled in his five hours at the crease, an innings which seemed to push the match out of New Zealand’s reach.

New Zealand started positively in their chase, with nine runs coming from the first over off the bowling of Chaminda Vaas. This included two slightly fortuitous but controlled boundaries through the slip cordon from Jamie How, a man desperately in need of a good performance. A nervous over against first innings star Lasith Malinga followed before the players went off for a lengthy break due to bad light and rain.

Afterwards they picked up where they left off against Vaas with six coming from the first over after the resumption, and before long the spectators saw the rare milestone for New Zealand of a 50-run opening partnership. It didn’t last much longer after that though as New Zealand collapsed to 60-2 when How departed, lbw to Malinga for the fourth time in the tour, for 33, and Cumming fell soon afterwards to the spin of Muttiah Muralitharan.

Mathew Sinclair and Stephen Fleming negotiated the remainder of play before bad light brought an early end to a day that was completely dominated by the Sri Lankans. New Zealand face a very difficult task and may need some assistance from the weather if they are to draw the match and win the series.

Sri Lanka 268 all out
Kumar Sangakkara 156 no, Chamara Silva 61
Chris Martin 3-50, Daniel Vettori 3-53

New Zealand 130 all out
Brendon McCullum 43, Jamie How 26
Lasith Malinga 5-68, Muttiah Muralitharan 4-31

Sri Lanka 365 all out
Chamara Silva 152 no, Chaminda Vaas 47
Daniel Vettori 7-130, Chris Martin 2-98

New Zealand 75-2
Jamie How 33, Craig Cumming 20
Muttiah Muralitharan 1-4, Lasith Malinga 1-20

New Zealand require 429 runs with 8 wickets in hand.