NEW DELHI: With all the pollution saga that dominated the proceedings on day two behind, it was time to concentrate on cricket and Sri Lanka did their best to shut down the murmurs of their ‘unsportsman-like’ demeanour on day three of the third and the final Test between India and Sri Lanka at the Feroz Shah Kotla on Monday.

The first passage of play that went Sri Lanka’s way in this match was led by experienced campaigner Angelo Mathews (90*) and skipper Dinesh Chandimal (52*) who put on an unbeaten 117-run stand for the fourth wicket, helping their team to 192/3 at lunch on day three, trailing India by 344 runs.

After withering the storm late in the day yesterday, Mathews looked confident right from the onset as the day three Kotla pitch lacked the bite that was exploited by Indian pacers Mohammd Shami and Ishant Sharma earlier. Plan for India did change a bit with both the pacers banging the ball short, and that did yield a few nervous moments for the SL batters. An attempted pull from Chandimal just evaded Ravindra Jadeja at square leg early in the session, but anything pitched up was dispatched well by the skipper. Chandimal got a reprieve when he played a back of length delivery on middle and leg uppishly from Shami towards leg gully, but Ajinkya Rahane failed to get a hand to it.

Shami once again bowled with good rhythm and got Mathews in trouble often with one that skidded off the pitch. One such delivery took Mathews’ edge which failed to carry to Cheteshwar Pujara in the slip cordon. Jadeja was employed earlier than Ravichadnran Ashwin and he managed to get the ball to spin from the rough, but both Chandimal and Mathews were cautious in their approach. Chandimal often came down the track to the left-arm spinner, but with no alarming change in the direction of the ball after pitching, the duo rotated the strike well.

A couple of real scorchers from Jadeja just about missed the stumps after squaring up Chandimal, but that was probably the slight luck he and his team would have wanted to stay afloat in the contest. Sri Lanka capitalised and managed to put on the first 100-run stand for the team in the entire series. In fact, this was only the second time SL put on a 100+ stand this year against India. Chandimal reached his 16th Test fifty – his third in a row – with a thickish outside edge to four.

As the session progressed, both Mathews and Chandimal looked more and more settled; however, just two overs before lunch was taken, Mathews charged down the track to Jadeja, on seeing the mid-off was inside the circle. Mathews was deceived by the flight and the outside edge just bounced in front of Ishant at point and Sri Lanka managed to take the session without losing any wickets.

Brief Scores : Sri Lanka 192/3 (Mathews 90*, Chandimal 52*; Jadeja 1/40) trail India 536/7 dec. (Kohli 243, Vijay 155; Sandakan 4/167) by 344 runs