UNB, Dhaka :
Sri Lanka made good progress on the third day of the rain-hit second Test on Wednesday posting 282-5 in reply to Bangladesh’s first innings total of 365 at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
Though rain washed out over four hours of play on day three the visitors added 139 runs for three wickets on the day.
At stumps Angelo Mathews (58) and Dinesh Chandimal (10)— the two most experienced campaigners of Sri Lanka— remained unbeaten.
They visitors are still trailing by 83 runs.
While Sri Lanka will look forward to adding more runs on the board on day four, Bangladesh will need some quick wickets giving away fewer runs.
In the first session of the day, Ebadot Hossian removed the nightwatchman Kasun Rajitha for a duck, and Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladesh’s most successful bowler so far taking three wickets in this match, removed overnight half-centurion Dimuth Karunaratne who was able to add only 10 runs on day three.
Angelo Mathews and Dhananjaya de Silva were the mainstays of Sri Lanka on the day adding more than 100 runs on the board on the fifth wicket. They made it tough for the hosts’ bowling attack to put more pressure on them.
The most exciting prospect of this match is now that the spinners started to get some bite off the surface which would make the wicket more difficult to bat in the next two days. And so the match could see a result unlike the first Test in Chattogram.
In the first innings of the match, Bangladesh posted 365 despite six of their batters failing to score anything.
Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das came up to rescue the hosts adding 282 runs on the board in the sixth wicket stand— the highest in history after losing five under 25 runs.
This series is part of the ICC World Test Championship. Bangladesh played seven matches in this prestigious event and won only a match against New Zealand early this year.
