Related Links : Sri Lanka in West Indies 2007/08 : Scorecard
Malinda Warnapura, the left handed opening batsman carried on with his good form shown in the warm-up game a few days back with a maiden test match hundred. On the opening day of the first test at the Providence Stadium, Sri Lanka are very much on track to get to a healthy first innings total. On a pitch that hardly helped the bowlers, Sri Lanka applied well to a good launchpad of 269 for 4 at stumps.
The West Indian bowling lacked the teeth and the visitors were too lucky to win the toss on what looks to be a dead batting track. The openers – Michael Vandort and Malinda Warnapura, both left handers provided them with a perfect start. Chris Gayle had just the two fast bowlers in Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor to make any sort of impact. His weak bowling attack went wicketless until a superb inswinging yorker from Taylor exploited the big backlift of Michael Vandort. By the time the tall Vandort could get his bat down, the swinging yorker had struck him on his foot to give the breakthrough for the homeside.
Vandort had done a fine job by then, scoring a solid 52 (from 117 balls with 8 fours). The opening stand was worth 130 in around 43 overs. Another partnership followed for the Lankans with Sangakkara joining hands with Malinda Warnapura. Both left handers looked in absolute control which forced Gayle to opt for a defensive approach. Plenty of spin was used in the form of the Captain himself along with debutant left arm spinner Sulieman Benn. The spinners were restrictive enough but never really produced wicket taking deliveries. There was one rare opportunity for West Indies when Warnapura had nicked one straight to Bravo in the slips off Gayle. However, that was put down and Warnapura had got to his maiden century a few minutes later. It was his first century in the third innings of his career!
West Indies in a way could bring back some life in the day’s play with a few wickets which included that of Warnapura (120 from 226 balls with 14 fours) and Sangakkara (50 from 114 balls with 3 fours). Both these left handers were dismissed to innocuous deliveries. If those two soft dismissals weren’t enough, Sri Lanka lost another one before close in the form of Thilan Samaraweera (0 from 2). That made the score to 243 for 4 with Jerome Taylor striking twice in the 83rd over. The visitors finished the day at 269 for 4 with Mahela Jayawardene on 25 and Dilshan on 15. Batsmen are expected to score plenty of runs on this track and all seems to depend on how the West Indian batting comes up against Muttiah Muralitharan.