For Sri Lanka, much-vaunted bowling fell flat

In comparison to the Lankans, Harbhajan Singh played the perfect foil for the Lankan line-up, also going by the fact that the pitch had begun to deteriorate by then.

While Atapattu may still believe that there isn’t much of a difference between the conditions back in Sri Lanka and here, he’ll be hoping that the other tracks don’t behave like this one.

It may just be a vain hope. The rest of the wickets in this series, with the exception of Vadodara, have tracks similar to the one here.

The recent Challenger Trophy at Mohali saw over 500 runs scored in most of the matches, while the Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Pune wickets are also perfect for batting.

With the Indian batting striking form, and Sachin Tendulkar deciding to cut loose from the start, there’s an uphill task ahead of Atapattu’s men.

The Sri Lankan captain will also have to tie up a few ends as far as his team is concerned. Though he couldn’t help the way Tendulkar, Pathan and Dravid batted, there were a few chinks in the armour that were shown up.

For starters, the fielding appeared to have fallen apart after an impressive start in the morning.

In comparison to Atapattu, Dravid proved to be excellent out in the middle, bringing in the right changes at the right time, that led to the downfall of Jayasuriya and Jayawardene.