THE decisive second and final Test resumes this morning, balanced on a knife’s edge.
After a second day on which 15 wickets fell from 89.3 overs for 315 runs - and which ended with the amply filled ground reverberating with rapture at the pace and aggression of two fledgling West Indian bowlers - Sri Lanka were 129 for five in their second innings.
Added to a first innings lead of 17, it puts them 146 ahead with five fragile wickets intact.
It is inconceivable that the West Indies can bat a second time with the same absence of application and common sense that caused their dismissal for 191 yesterday.
Still, they will not want to be asked to score many more than 250 to win with a batting order so shortened to accommodate an additional bowler that the No.6 position once filled by Garry Sobers and Clive Lloyd is now occupied by Omari Banks.
The truth is that a Sabina Park pitch that has reverted to its old qualities of pace and bounce, with a little grass thrown in to aid movement, exposed the technical and temperamental frailities of both teams.
Sri Lanka’s batsmen, so prolific in the lifeless conditions at home, once more confirmed their aversion to foreign fields.
They were reckless in their first innings 208 on the first day and in their similar struggles against the pace and swing of Corey Collymore, Vasbert Drakes and the two young tyros, Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor, in the last 38 overs yesterday.
The West Indies could do no better on a surface hardened by two days of hot, unbroken sunshine.
Although he claimed the key wicket of Brian Lara for 10 and added a couple more late in the piece, the perplexing off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan did not initiate their problems, as he usually does for Sri Lanka.
Instead, their batting was unravelled by a succession of inappropriate strokes against the pace and steep lift of Prabath Nissanka, whose five wickets for 64 were his best figures in his fourth Test, and the left-arm swing of Chaminda Vaas.
Throughout the two days, no batsman has settled. An edge or a false stroke has never been far away.
After an unconvincing start of 54 between Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds, the West Indies lost both and Lara by lunch, when they were 87 for three, and the remaining seven wickets for 104 off 25.3 overs in the second session to be all out precisely at tea.
Nissanka, the third bowler introduced, removed both openers in successive overs to set off their problems.
Gayle had his troubles against both Vaas and his left-arm new ball partner, Thilan Thushara, and was eventually undone by a lifting delivery that cramped him for room and deflected from the shoulder of his horizontal bat to gully.
Hinds, century-maker in the first Test, added only four to his 15 when he was reprieved by Muralitharan’s missed catch off a skier at mid-on off Vaas before edging an extravagant drive, with weight on the backfoot, to the wicket-keeper.
Lara fell an over before lunch for 10, a rare failure for a batsman with two double and three single hundreds against the opposition, after which captain Hashan Tillakaratne returned to his fast bowlers. They did not let him down.
Vaas found Ramnaresh Sarwan drifting so far across his crease that he plucked out the exposed leg-stump, six runs after the unsettled vice-captain had escaped with a cut through gully’s hands off Nissanka.
Nissanka then dispatched Banks and the vulnerable Marlon Samuels to low first slip catches by Tillakaratne as the West Indies continued to lose touch.
When Vasbert Drakes led a counter-attack with successive boundaries off Nissanka, Tillekaratne recalled Muralitharan but the veteran fast bowler swept him for two fours in an over and greeted the introduction of the other, more conventional off-spinner, Kumar Dharmasena, with two more fours through the off-side.
Drakes and Ridley Jacobs had put together 39 when Muralitharan’s undetected straight ball was enough for an LBW decision as Jacobs went back.
Jerome Taylor drove his second ball to extra-cover off Dharmasena but Drakes, Corey Collymore raised 28 for the last two wickets before Nissanka was recalled and rounded things off with his third ball.
When Sri Lanka batted a second time, wickets again fell at regular intervals to keep the match on a knife’s edge.
Collymore, once more bustling with intent and moving the ball around, claimed the dangerous left-handers Sanath Jayasuriya and Kumara Sangakkara cheaply.
Jayasuriya’s slash offered an unaccepted catch to Samuels at gully off Collymore but yet another West Indian fielding error was not costly. In the next over, Collymore brought one back for an LBW decision, the third time in four innings in the series he had taken care of Jayasuriya.
Sangakkara went to an edge to Jacobs and, after a dogged partnership of 37 between Marvan Atapattu and Mehela Jayawardene, Taylor and Edwards, combined to sweep aside both as well as wicket-keeper Romesh Kaluwitharana late in the day.
Taylor had waited almost seven days and 48 overs for his first Test wicket. It was a telling one when it came.
Atapattu, one of the most difficult batsmen in world cricket to dislodge, was attracted to one just outside off-stump and touched it into Jacobs’ gloves.
There was a mixture of relief and joy in the celebrations, repeated when Edwards repeated the dose to get rid of Jayawardene right after Kaluwitharana had taken him for four boundaries in an over.
Sabina erupted in the following over when Taylor knocked back Kaluwitharana’s off-stump with the perfectly pitched leg-cutter.
It will take more of the same this morning to finish off Sri Lanka and reduce the challenge the batsmen must face a second time.