Sri Lanka bowling coach Rumesh Ratnayake felt Lakshan Sandakan should have bowled more googly deliveries as India struggled to cope with it at the end of the first day's play.
With India on a roll on Day 1 of the third and final Test, Sandakan gave some sort of hope to the visitors, picking up wickets of Murali Vijay (155 off 267 balls) and Ajinkya Rahane (1 off 5 balls) right at the end of the day's play.
However, Ratnayake is of the opinion that Sandakan should have brought his googly deliveries much earlier.
"We try to encourage what we have done well and keep doing them like Sandakan, he should have brought in the googly much earlier, that's one of the things we spoke at tea and which he did only at the end. So we are asking why he didn't bring it on more," he said during the post-match press conference.
"He is comfortable with his normal chinaman deliveries but the googly is the thing that we see might trouble the batsmen which he hides very well and not very easy to read. He should bring it on and mix it."
Ratnayake said the team decided to go with seven batsmen, to improve their batting performances.
"It was a decision which we had to take. We had to decide whether to go with the extra bowler or with an extra batsman since we hadn't done well in our batting we wanted to make a better statement establishing a better score. "If we were going to bat the first day we were to have those seven batsmen that was the decision we had to take. It certainly taxes the opening bowlers because they are the ones who bowled the most in the last game also. Even today they are heavily taxed," he said.
When asked whether the injured Rangana Herath was missed, he replied, "He is our leading wicket-taker, we do miss him a lot saying that we had to bring Sandakan in because of the fact that he is next in line and we saw a glimpse of what he can do at the end. I wish it had come two sessions earlier."
Skipper Dinesh Chandimal's clever field placement helped Lahiru Gamage dismiss Cheteshwar Pujara (23 off 39 balls, four 4s). He kept a fielder on leg-slip and the plan worked as Sadeera Samarawickrama took a sharp catch to reduce India to 78/2 in 20.2 overs.
When asked whether it was a pre-planned tactic, Ratnayake said, "It was good captaincy there by Chandimal by having that leg slip going. It was a spur of the moment thing they thought that he is lifting the ball there and had that leg slip which worked out for us. It was not pre-planned."