In just twenty-two balls, Sri Lanka completed the first Test match against New Zealand in Galle on Monday morning, securing a 1-0 series lead. After taking the final two wickets of New Zealand’s innings to dismiss them for 211, Prabath Jayasuriya completed a fifer that enabled the hosts to win by 63 runs.

With two wickets remaining and a declining pitch, New Zealand needed 68 runs to win on the last day’s play being tantalizingly close. But there was hope for the visitors to fight back because Rachin Ravindra had handled the conditions well on the penultimate day, going to stumps undefeated on 91.

Sadly for the Kiwis, all the hopes were squashed in the first over of the morning when Jayasuriya pitched one on the leg stump, and the ball straightened trapping the southpaw on the back leg. Even a review was not going to save Ravindra. New Zealand not only lost the wicket but also lost all the hopes of winning a historic game.

A few balls later, the spinner almost had William O’Rourke, but this time, the review wasn’t in Sri Lanka’s favor. Still, the opposition was only going to continue temporarily. After two overs, O’Rourke was cleaned up by Jayasuriya, who had beaten his outside edge to seal the game for Sri Lanka. 

New Zealand’s skipper Tim Southee pointed out the batting collapse on the third morning as one of the key reasons for them losing the game.

“I guess the position where we got ourselves in, in the first innings, was good. But the last four or five fell for not many, and there was an opportunity to get a bigger first-innings lead,” he said. “We knew that that second new ball was going to be tough given the nature of the wicket and the quality of the Sri Lankan spin bowlers.

“If you look at those moments, if we were able to press on and get more of a lead, things could have been different. It was still a good Test match. There’s plenty of good things we can take into the next couple of days.”

Sri Lanka on the other hand would be very pleased by the outcome of the game and would be eager to get going and pull out a similar result in the 2nd test as well and seal the home series.

Brief scores: Sri Lanka 305 & 309 (Dimuth Karunaratne 83; Ajaz Patel 6/90), New Zealand 340 & 211 (Rachin Ravindra 92; Prabath Jayasuriya 5/68, Ramesh Mendis 3-83) Sri Lanka win by 63 runs

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