SSC Colombo, Sri Lanka: The 4th day of the test confirmed the murmur behind the curtains about the pitch being more of a road than the cricket pitch. Mahela might not feel so proud of his 10 century record on this ground, if this is what the ground has to make a test match only for batsmen. Indian batsmen not only easily overcame the follow-on threat, but also overcome the Lankan total without any fuss, and on top of that were still playing at the end of the day on 669/9.
The day saw another series of records in favor of batsmen being created. Tendulkar broke another record of Sir Bradman by scoring 17th 150 plus knock. He ultimately went on hitting his 5th double century before falling to a Dilshan, not a full time bowler, who later also claimed Dhoni and Harbhajan becoming the most successful Lankan bowler for a while, until Mendis overtook him with 4 wickets.
Raina on the other hand became the 12th Indian and 3rd Left hander Indian to score a century on debut. He scored 120 very valuable runs joining the league of Lala Amarnath, Ganguly, Sehwag and 8 more Indian players.
Tendulkar with Raina added 256 runs for the 5th wicket, creating a new record for th wicket partnership in Ind Vs SL series. This also became the 4th best partnership for runs in the Ind Vs SL series.
While 5 batsmen, 3 from SL and 2 from India have scored centuries and another one missed after being out on 99, 7 bowlers have also reached century plus score. 4 bowlers from India and 3 bowlers from SL have so far conceded more than 100 runs. Even the 4th SL bowler was spared on 96 runs because he did not bowl any over after that. In fact, Randiv went on to score double century too.
The 5th day has no intriguing question. Unless fans want to see SL bat and score some useless runs, may be a century or two more in the match, nobody will enter the ground on the 5th day to see when it will be called a draw, one of the most boring one indeed. The curator must be either too nationalistic or else he must have been bribed by the limited over lobby to prepare a pitch for a dull draw, to add more reason for the case against Test Matches.
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