George Dockrell sparked a mini-revival by Ireland in the final hour of a steamy first day of the opening Test in Sri Lanka today, but the home side went to stumps firmly in control on 386-4.
ockrell, brought into the side primarily to strengthen the batting, found a way past Kusal Mendis’s attempted sweep to have him lbw for 140, and Ben White and Mark Adair followed up with a wicket each to claw back some of Sri Lanka’s advantage.
The day belonged to Mendis and Dimuth Karunaratne, who added 281 for the second wicket, by far the largest partnership conceded by Ireland in a Test, and the joyous leap from Adair when he had the Lankan skipper caught behind for 179 was heartfelt.
Curtis Campher had found a bit of extra bounce to break the opening stand before lunch and give keeper Lorcan Tucker the first of three catches, but in the heat and extreme humidity, the Ireland attack understandably toiled.
“We’ve probably played in hotter conditions, but that would be the most humid,” acting-coach Gary Wilson said. “We didn’t control the run rate as much as we’d have liked but kept fighting all day and got the reward for the immense character we showed.
“At tea we thought Sri Lanka would be in their rooms saying, ‘We’ve ground Ireland down for two sessions and now’s the time to cash in’ and we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen - and it didn’t - and the boys deserve great credit for that.”
The wicketless afternoon session against two set batsman on a very good pitch was particularly hard work.
The fitness and energy shown throughout were a credit to the Ireland support staff, as was the ground fielding, but Wilson knows from experience it will be even tougher on the second morning.
“It’ll be hard,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there again, and a lot of the guys may never have done that in red-ball cricket. But we’ll talk about that and the fitness levels are good, so hopefully, we can restrict Sri Lanka to the lowest possible total.”