ESPNcricinfo staff16-Oct-2015At 70 for 3, West Indies needed some stability and Darren Bravo provided that, mixing caution and aggression rather well•AFPSoon after bringing up his fifty though, he dragged one to midwicket where Dinesh Chandimal leapt to pull of a spectacular grab•AFPDhammika Prasad chipped in with two middle-order wickets, including West Indies captain Jason Holder for 19 as the visitors slumped to 165 for 6•AFPThe lower order added some vital runs but Herath would not be denied. He picked up 6 for 68 as West Indies were all out for 251, well short of Sri Lanka’s 484•AFPAngelo Mathews enforced the follow-on and Herath and Milinda Siriwardana picked up a wicket each as West Indies finished the third day at 67 for 2, still trailing by 166•AFP

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Dec-2015David Warner set the tone for the day by smashing five fours as he raced to 23 off 11•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesHe then top-edged a Jerome Taylor delivery to Marlon Samuels, who completed a juggling catch at short extra cover•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesUsman Khawaja, who was returning from injury, and Joe Burns patiently built a century partnership•Getty ImagesBoth batsmen completed fifties as they took Australia to 193 for 1 at tea•Getty ImagesSoon after the break, Burns reached his second Test century•Getty ImagesTwo balls later, Khawaja got to his ton, his third in as many games.•Getty ImagesThe pair took their partnership tally to 258 before Kraigg Brathwaite finally removed Burns for 128 late in the day•Getty ImagesWI clawed back with two late wickets but the hosts were in total control, ending the first day at 345 for 3.•Getty Images

ESPNcricinfo staff11-Dec-2015New Zealand’s quicks then made inroads into Sri Lanka’s top-order. Trent Boult had Kusal Mendis caught behind for 8.•Getty ImagesThe wicket was BJ Watling’s 100th Test dismissal•AFPFour overs later, Neil Wagner sent back debutant Udara Jayasundera for 1, as Sri Lanka went into lunch struggling at 38 for 2•AFPDimuth Karunaratne then went on rebuild Sri Lanka’s innings post lunch…•Getty Images… And found an able partner in Dinesh Chandimal, as the batsmen dug out the entire afternoon session, taking Sri Lanka to 103 for 2 at tea•Getty ImagesKarunaratne built on his fifty post tea and Chandimal, too, reached the milestone in 143 balls.•Getty ImagesSoon after Chandimal reached his fifty, left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner brought New Zealand back by dismissing Karunaratne for 84, ending the partnership at 122•Getty ImagesSri Lanka lost captain Angelo Mathews three overs later, but Chandimal took the side through to 197 for 4 at stumps, and ended the day unbeaten at 83•Getty Images

ESPNcricinfo staff27-Nov-2015Shahid Afridi was the main thorn in England’s side as he took 3 for 15, which made him the leading wicket-taker in T20I history•AFPJos Buttler gave the total a kick with a lively 33 in his first match as captain•Getty ImagesLiam Plunkett’s pace again proved crucial during the defence as he claimed three wickets•Getty ImagesStephen Parry varied his pace intelligently as he and Adil Rashid played a key role•AFPAfridi almost turned the match around as he clubbed 24 off eight balls•Getty ImagesBut Chris Woakes held his nerve having been taken for 20 runs in an over by Afridi•Getty ImagesSarfraz Ahmed swept into his stumps at the beginning of the final over and Pakistan fell three runs short•Getty Images

ESPNcricinfo staff07-Dec-2015…before Ravindra Jadeja broke through with the second new ball, ending Amla’s 244-ball vigil•BCCIDe Villiers, joined by Faf du Plessis, though, continued to resist India•BCCIDu Plessis hung on for 77 balls before Jadeja struck again•BCCIR Ashwin then had JP Duminy lbw for a duck•BCCIDale Vilas also showed good staying powers as South Africa went to tea at 136 for 5•BCCIHowever, Umesh Yadav bowled Vilas in the first over after the break•BCCIThe wicket sparked a collapse as the visitors lost their last five wickets in a space of 27 balls•BCCIAshwin, who grabbed the big wicket of de Villiers, ended the series with 31 scalps and his fifth Man-of-the-Series award•BCCIThe 337-run win meant that India moved up to No.2 in the ICC rankings•BCCI

ESPNcricinfo’s correspondents travelling around India for the World T20 pick their best moments from the first round of the tournament

15-Mar-2016Sidharth Monga: Unchecked tempers and clenched fists
Sultan Ahmed is 38. Amir Ali is 37. They play cricket together, not for their country of birth, but for a country they migrated to for a livelihood. In their first match on the world stage, they come together at 137 for 6 in a chase of 155 against Ireland. Amir has done all the hard work, reviving Oman from 90 for 5. He is on 27 off 13, and the equation has now come down to 16 runs off nine balls. Sultan is on strike, facing Boyd Rankin, who has got a wicket earlier in the over. He misses the ball and starts running. Amir runs too, but then realises Niall O’Brien has been quick and alert behind the wicket. Sultan is run out, and he lashes out at the man who has kept Oman alive.This kind of emotion is rare to see in elite sport; there is disappointment, despair and frustration taken out at one’s own team-mate. Fortunately for Oman, Max Sorensen bowls an ordinary over, and the two men bask in the glory next to each other at the post-match presentation and the press conference. When they are walking off, I remind Sultan – in front of Amir – how he had absolutely lost it after that run-out. They can now say it was done in the heat of the moment, and that the plan was to run if he missed and bring the settled batsman back on strike. And though Sultan was livid then, he now recognises that Amir did the smart thing by not risking his own wicket.In their next game, against Bangladesh, Oman show that they are not the side to keep their emotions in check. There is gesticulation at every error in the field, and there are a few. There are those little clenched fists at every boundary in the home stretch of the chase; and there is flamboyance with their celebrations. It was a short ride, but they took you along on it.Melinda Farrell: Van Meekeren’s spotlight
It’s finger-numbingly cold in the shadows of the Himalayas as Paul van Meekeren waits at third man. The 23-year-old Netherlands seamer is nervous. It’s his first appearance at a world tournament. It’s the fifth ball of the match and Bangladesh opener Soumya Sarkar charges down the wicket for a good old slog only to find a thick edge.The ball arcs towards van Meekeran through the sparse atmosphere. He’s sure he has this. A metre inside the boundary, hands above head, the ball hits his fingers. And spits straight through them. Dropped. In a match where everything is on the line.Three overs later, Peter Borren throws van Meekeren the ball. As he walks back to his mark, the nerves quieten. He’s a bowler. This is why he’s here. He’s going to enjoy this moment. Sarkar gets into his crouch and waits.Van Meekeren practises on artificial mats, but here, his tall, gangly form gallops in on grass. He somehow extracts bounce on a pitch that looks like concrete but plays like cardboard. Sarkar is taken by surprise as he flays at the ball and edges to the keeper. Van Meekeren has a wicket with his first ball on the world stage.Redemption begets confidence; the early mistake is forgotten and he is in this match now, hungry. He will bowl 35 more deliveries in this competition. He will take five more wickets and concede just 31 runs. But it wouldn’t be enough.Then, he’d pack his bags and go home to wait four more years for another chance, his moment in the sun as fleeting as glimpses of the Himalayan peaks as the clouds close in.Cartoonish physique aside, Mohammad Shahzad is a seriously good batsman•Chris WhiteoakKarthik Krishnaswamy: Shahzad’s rampage
Mohammad Shahzad is in red-hot form, but he is looking a little edgy in this winner-takes-all clash, and chops Wellington Masakadza’s left-arm spin straight to the point fielder three times in the first over. Something has to give. Tendai Chatara digs one in short, and is forced to flinch before he can even start his follow-through. Behind him, the umpire ducks. Shahzad has just swatted the ball back down the ground, meatily, like a down-the-line tennis forehand.It’s hard to believe Afghanistan left Shahzad out of their squad for the 2015 World Cup. It might be okay, though still debatable, for a top-ranked team with plenty of bench strength to leave out a skillful player for supposedly not conforming to fitness standards. It’s an entirely different matter when a chronically inconsistent batting side leaves out its best batsman on those tenuous grounds. It’s easy to chuckle at Shahzad’s cartoonish physique, but he’s a seriously good cricketer: he averages over 50 in first-class cricket, over 35 in ODIs, and over 30 in T20Is.Shahzad is a laid-back character, but the power in his shots might well stem from anger at that snub. Chatara bowls two more short balls. The first one is wide of off stump, and it rockets to the point boundary before anyone can blink. The other is rising towards his head, but he steps across it, swivels, and hooks – in utterly textbook fashion – to the fine-leg boundary. Chatara is forced to bowl a little fuller, and Shahzad is waiting for it. Third man is up in the circle, and he opens his bat face, finishing with the back of his bat pointing down the pitch, to dab it to the fielder’s left and pick up his fourth boundary of the over.Jarrod Kimber: Cricket’s global avatar
Tanwir Afzal is not a household name. Or face. Or even someone who people even casually recognise. He is Hong Kong’s captain and tossed the coin for the first game. India newspapers at the time were suggesting the tournament started in seven days’ time. Even the TV commentators have, at times, suggested the real tournament starts later on. But the ICC has decided that these qualifiers are part of the tournament; even if it is just a face-saving excercise, that is the official stance. So think of how far cricket has come. On the opening day of this tournament, our second biggest in cricket, when Afzal chose to open the bowling, it was a Hong Kong bowler who opened the tournament. We were told for years that the world did not like cricket, that it was our little game, and that it would always stay that way. No matter our age, none of us when we were young would think a Hong Kong bowler would be the first player we would see at a tournament this big. If we have come this far, how far can we go?

Our correspondent snarls as the traffic does likewise around him, and struggles with limited vegetarian meal options

Vishal Dikshit03-Feb-2016January 25
To get to Dhaka from Bangalore I had to fly via Kolkata. I wasn’t expecting a cricket conversation right on the first flight. I bump into some movie and TV actors from Kolkata who are returning after a Celebrity Cricket League match in Bangalore. I find myself in a conversation with one of them, who says it’s his first season. Now I feel gutted for missing the first five seasons of the CCL.January 26
A little sleep-deprived, I reach the Shere Bangla Stadium in the morning to watch the India Under-19 team train. A big group of journalists, photographers, security personnel, groundsmen and organisers are busy watching Rahul Dravid, the India U-19 coach. Not sure if anyone else can be recognised, apart from batsman Sarfaraz Khan. I want to get Dravid’s views on the upcoming Indian stars and the team’s preparations. When the team packs up, he’s the first one to head towards the bus. Having met him several times at the ESPNcricinfo office in Bangalore, I expect him to recognise me when he walks past. Walking briskly, at the last second he lifts his eyes to look at the group of Indian journalists, except me, and just nods. Now I know how Pakistani players feel during IPL auctions.After an unimpressive lunch I take a bus to Sylhet. I was told the journey would take four hours. Accounting for traffic I thought it would spill over to five, maybe six. How many does it take? Seven! My laptop runs out of battery, my phone has to be put on airplane mode. Co-passengers fall asleep, I throw some biscuit wrappers on the floor, then pick them up. But nothing helps make it seem like time was actually passing.Fans and security guards outside the team hotel in Sylhet•Vishal Dikshit/ESPNcricinfo LtdJanuary 27
I take deep breaths in quaint Sylhet, away from the pollution, dirt and traffic that rule Dhaka. A CNG (that’s what tuk-tuks are called here) to the scenic Sylhet International Stadium. I bake myself in the winter sun at the ground, watch some Pakistani teenagers make fun of each other, and soon catch the Afghanistan players stroll in. “Let’s get an interview with an Afghan player, there must be some captivating stories from growing up in Afghanistan,” I tell myself. Out walks the captain Ihsanullah. I walk towards him confidently to introduce myself and he squashes my right hand in his the way a butcher would a chicken’s neck before raising his knife.January 28
Fresh and cold morning – much, much colder than Dhaka. The Pakistan-Afghanistan match turns out one-sided. Highlight of the day? The lunch is egg rice, chicken curry, fried chicken, prawn curry and a vegetarian curry. So much variety! Oh, did I mention I’m vegetarian?January 29
I arrive at the team hotel in Sylhet to interview Canada captain Abraash Khan. A hotel employee knocks on the door to ask if we want ice cream. Before my taste buds can jump at the opportunity, Abraash declines the offer. That evening, I’m back at the hotel to talk to Afghanistan legspinner Rashid Khan and he offers to make me some tea in his room. Just when he picks up the kettle, an Afghanistan support staff member knocks and tells Rashid he’d better ask me to leave or the ICC may have an issue. Back to reality and my self-made tea in my hotel room.Pizza base? Pita bread? No, just naan•Vishal Dikshit/ESPNcricinfo LtdJanuary 30
Another match, another one-sided affair. This time Sri Lanka v Afghanistan. The lunch menu is the same too. After the match I want to talk to the Sri Lanka captain, Charith Asalanka, so their manager asks me to turn up near the team dugout after the presentation. I walk along the boundary, do the interview and head back to the press box. A security guard catches me near the sightscreen and says in Bengali: “How are you here, you don’t have the ‘Pitch Access’ accreditation.””Yeah, I was called by the team manager. And the match got over a while back.””But you are not allowed here.””Where?””The field.””But I’m already on the field. Now I want to go back to the media centre, where I’m allowed.””Okay, but you are not allowed here!””What to do now?”*Door opens*January 31
The thought of going back to Dhaka makes me contemplate absconding without telling anyone. But it’s my first international assignment and patience prevails. The 30-minute flight is over in a flash, but the real journey lies ahead. It takes another hour or so to make it from the Dhaka airport to my hotel. After lunch I head to the team hotel in Dhaka, speak to some effervescent Nepali players and then brace myself for the “voyage”. I need to cover about 13km. I get a CNG rather easily. How lucky am I? Well, the journey takes two and a half hours. Average speed? Please do your own math.Sylhet Stadium: a sight for sore eyes after the chaos of Dhaka•BCBFebruary 1
New month but same old Dhaka story. It is the first match I have to cover at the Shere Bangla Stadium, which is a good 12km from my hotel. It usually takes 45 minutes. I leave an hour in advance. Still don’t make it in time. About a kilometre and a half before the ground, the CNG breaks down. The driver pops out of the vehicle, goes to the back and returns in a minute with the axle, showing it off with a smile like he has won a lottery. It is almost time for the first ball. The three of us – the two others are also journalists travelling to the ground from the same hotel – start wading through school children, office goers, shopkeepers spitting on footpaths, muck, dead chickens, and several other unidentifiable things before finally reaching the heavily guarded venue at around 9.15. The India v Nepal match is delayed by half an hour by fog. Time for a .February 2
A rare off day. Well, not quite. The Pakistan and Sri Lanka teams arrive in Dhaka after their league games in Sylhet and the media wants to watch them practise. My focus is on food, though. Shortly after I drag myself to the ground again, some Indian journalists get together for some local food at a restaurant right across from the stadium. Beef, chicken and all that is fine, but the limelight is hogged by the naans. Thicker than the plates we were eating from, they were fluffy, baked to perfection, and resembled the more popular pita breads. A fellow journalist isn’t impressed, though: “Are these pizza bases?”

Former South Africa rugby captain Francois Pienaar talks about his role on Cricket South Africa’s review panel

Interview by Firdose Moonda21-Apr-2016Why did you agree to be involved in the CSA review?
Passion. I love this country and I have been involved in cricket – I’ve played cricket at school, I played Nuffield Cricket, I was involved in the IPL marketing when it came here in 2009. As a panel, we all know things about high-performance and closing out games. I have been involved in a number of initiatives where we’ve put structures in place and they have borne fruit. This is just a privilege, to be honest.

“When you get to the final, it’s a 50-50 call and it’s the smart guys who work out the margins. It’s all about the margins”

How will you and your fellow panelists approach the review?
What we will try and learn is what the trends over the last ten years are. We will look at trends, selection, stats and come up with recommendations.What do you, specifically, hope to bring to the review?
A different thinking from not being in the sport, coming from outside the sport. I have been really privileged to get involved in high-performance teams that have won.Can you talk about some of the teams you were involved with and how they achieved what you call high-performance status? In 1993, the Lions won 100% of their games. In 1994, we won 90%. As captain and coach of the Springbok rugby team, Kitch Christie and myself, we never lost. There was a certain culture of that side and a way of doing things. Our management team fulfilled high-performing roles in getting us to get a shot at the title. Even then, there are no guarantees. When you get to the final, it’s a 50-50 call and it’s the smart guys who work out the margins. It’s all about the margins.Then I went over to England and rugby was really amateur. I was a player-coach at Saracens, I needed to put those processes in place and, luckily, took the team to win their first ever cup. Those sort of things I am really proud of.A brand to admire: the All Blacks have won the last two World Cups•Getty Images Have you seen anything similar to that in cricket?
I had a magnificent session with the Aussies before the Ashes in the early 2000s. They asked me to do a session on margins and big games and how to close out games. I was sort of embarrassed. The best cricket team in the world by a long shot was asking me, but I found it so interesting. My payment there was that I got an insight into how they run their team. Steve Waugh as a captain and a leader – wow! I got so much from that.What makes a high-performance team?
Culture trumps strategy for breakfast. If you don’t have the right culture in any organisation, it’s very hard to be a high-performance team. The brand must be stronger than anything else. CEOs and coaches and captains come and go but you have to understand the culture and the core of why teams are high-performance teams, and you can’t tinker with that. As soon as you start tinkering with that, then you stand the risk of not remaining a high-performance team.Look at the All Blacks brand [New Zealand rugby], and how they nurture and love and embrace that brand. One of the nicest things for me was at the last World Cup when Graham Henry, who coached them when they won the World Cup in 2011, was coaching Argentina and New Zealand were playing against Argentina in the opening match at Wembley. I was there. My question would be what would happen in South Africa if a team of ours – cricket, rugby, soccer – if the coach who had won the World Cup in the previous outing is now coaching the opposition in the opening match. Would we invite him to lunch with the team the day before the game? I think not. They did that. The All Blacks invited Henry because he loves the guys, he is part of that brand, part of that passion, so why should they not invite him? They knew, if we are not smarter than him, if we don’t train hard, then we don’t deserve to win. It’s about the culture.

“The transfer of knowledge is something I am quite interested in discussing. Do we do that, and what are the reasons for us not doing it?”

Then afterwards, Sonny Bill Williams gave away his medal. Was it him or part of the culture? I would think it’s part of the culture. Same with Richie McCaw. Why did he not retire in the World Cup? Because if he did, it would have been about him and not about the team, and he knew it needed to be about the team. That’s my take. How do you create a winning culture?
Let’s go back to rugby. Every World Cup that has been won since 1987, the core of that winning national team came from the club side that dominated. So that side knew how to win. Like in 1995, the core of our team was from the Lions. If you infuse that culture with incredible players, they will enhance the way you do things.”We will look at trends, selection, stats and come up with recommendations”•IDI/Getty Images Are there other elements that go into creating a winning team?
Form is very important and so are combinations – they have to work very well – and then there is leadership. How do the leaders close a game down, how do they make decisions, and how do you work with other leaders in the team to do that?Rugby is a fairly simple game: it’s about how easy you release pressure, your exit strategy, and how you stay unpredictable on attack. For that to happen, there are certain elements that need to fall into place. But the overarching thing is, do you have the right culture, have the right guys in form, have the right combinations and the leaders? Can they execute? And by leaders it’s not only the captain, it’s the coaches, the management staff. If you can do that right, you will be competitive a lot of the time, and if you can bottle that so that when the next guy comes, you pass the baton – you can’t change that. Bottle it, understand it, love it. You’ll be on the right track.Is one of South Africa’s problems that they have not found a way of gaining or transferring that knowledge?
The transfer of knowledge is something I am quite interested in discussing. Do we do that, and what are the reasons for us not doing it? In rugby, we’ve never had that culture. We don’t have ex-coaches, for example, involved. We have got universities, schools – how can we bottle that, how can we work together? The transfer of knowledge and the sharing of ideas, we need to rekindle that.Will transformation form part of the review?
Everything is open for discussion and it should be. If you want to do a proper job, you should have the opportunity to ask questions about all elements that enhance high-performance.

ESPNcricinfo staff24-May-2016Shane Watson dismissed Suresh Raina with a short ball soon thereafter, reducing Lions to 9 for 3 in the fourth over•BCCIDinesh Karthik and Dwayne Smith then put on 85 off 61 for the fourth wicket to revive Lions’ innings•BCCISmith was particularly aggressive, hitting five fours and six sixes in his 41-ball 73•BCCIBut the wickets of Karthik, Smith and Ravindra Jadeja in the space of three overs left Lions tottering again, at 115 for 6 in the 17th over•BCCIEklavya Dwivedi made a 9-ball 19 before Watson dismissed Dwivedi and Dwayne Bravo off consecutive balls in the 19th over to finish with four wickets; Lions stumbled to 158 all out•BCCIVirat Kohli chopped a delivery from Dhawal Kulkarni onto his stumps for a duck, his first in 51 T20 innings, in the second over•BCCITwo overs later, Kulkarni dismissed Chris Gayle and KL Rahul off consecutive balls•BCCIWhen Watson and Sachin Baby fell, Royal Challengers Bangalore were reeling at 29 for 5 in the sixth over•BCCIStuart Binny briefly kept AB de Villiers company with a 15-ball 21, but was out to a rough lbw decision. Royal Challengers slumped to 68 for 6•BCCIJust when things were looking dire, de Villiers played a sparkling knock under pressure, finishing with an unbeaten 79 off 47•BCCIHe was well supported by Iqbal Abdulla, who played a composed knock for 33 off 25 in a 91-run stand to take Royal Challengers to their first final since 2011•BCCI

When the new SSC was contriving excitement with a score of 26 for 5, Dinesh Chandimal embraced everything he is not and no matter what the surface was doing, he had to wrestle himself

Andrew Fidel Fernando in Colombo14-Aug-2016Through the noughties, the SSC pitch was so flat Sri Lankans were granted a Test hundred there along with their birth certificates. There was a bleak, authoritarian air to SSC matches in that decade. Games took on the unsettling aspect of a military parade.Mahela Jayawardene scored hundreds almost by rote here, and towards the end of his career, appeared more relieved than joyful at the milestone, almost as if he would have been court-martialled for falling short. Captains then had Muttiah Muralitharan wheeling away for days on end. Like with the general’s favourite jeep, his wearing parts would be continually replaced – limbs reattached when they fell off, eyeballs popped back in their sockets when they went rolling along the floor.In 2014, though, the old pitch was dug up along with the fossilised remains of generations of bowlers, and a new layer of clay had been put down. It is on this new strip that Rangana Herath smothered Pakistan with slow, lovable left-arm, in 2014. It is this strip that had been so seamer-friendly last year, that it inspired sweary, caveman, head-banging from Ishant Sharma. And it is on this pitch that South Africa almost lost a Test – saved on that occasion by rain, and batting so sleep-inducing that even its memory might prevent the conclusion of this sent…But if there is a Sri Lanka batsman who is the opposite of the noughties SSC surface, it is Dinesh Chandimal. His strokeplay is by nature, effervescent. He is so talkative he could chat up a power pylon. Chandimal, as character and cricketer, is more like Galle on day five, where the outrageous routinely occurs. Even on his quieter outings, he is Headingley on the first morning. He drives wildly, cuts extravagantly, throws his every atom into the sweep, and is in general like a human tune at the crease. It is not always great, but it rarely fails to get a few feet tapping along.In this innings, though, when the new SSC was contriving excitement with a score of 26 for 5, Chandimal embraced everything he is not, and contrived for viewers the old SSC experience. He made 132 from 356, when less than a year ago he famously struck 162 not out from 169. From the three sessions that he batted through, his returns were 30, 27 and 41. This was ballad batting. The block and leave were played again and again: two endlessly alternating chords.If there were two strokes that woke you up like the passing of a freighter, they were the slogged four off Jon Holland, and the reverse-swept six against the turn of Nathan Lyon, hot on its heels. But soon enough, disruption forgotten, his innings, and the SSC, was allowed to drift peacefully off again.This transformation of character took so much out of Chandimal that he was unable to take the field after his almost six-hour innings. Often a verbal runaway train after he has scored a hundred, Chandimal could barely muster one-sentence replies after play on Sunday. “I was under pressure before this innings,” he said. “I didn’t play that well for the reverse swinging ball. Because of that, I changed my approach a bit.”Batting in partnership with Chandimal, it was Rangana Herath who provided the day’s liveliest moments. Clearly in the midst of a batting revival at this late stage of his career, Herath waddles to the middle frowning like an old man peeved to find kids playing on his lawn, and brandishes his stick irritably, slapping Josh Hazlewood over midwicket for four. Having exerted himself, he hobbled off soon enough, retiring hurt for 33 after he was hit in a nasty place. Thankfully, he recovered. His gentlepersonly bowling avatar was seen later in the day.Through their second-wicket stand, Australia have now moved towards parity. But it is partly because of Chandimal that Sri Lanka can still dream of that rare whitewash. His was not one of the SSC’s handout hundreds. No matter what the surface was doing, for this one, he had to wrestle himself.