Sri Lanka cricket team
Host Sri Lanka declared its innings with a score of 602/5 on the second day of the second Test match being played at the Galle International Cricket Stadium. Powerful batsman Kamendu Mendis remained unbeaten after scoring 182 runs while Kusal Mendis played an unbeaten century of 106 runs. Apart from this, Dinesh Chandimal scored 116 runs. By the end of the second day’s play, in response to Sri Lanka’s huge score, the visiting New Zealand team lost the wickets of the opening pair of Tom Latham and Devon Conway. By the end of the day’s play, New Zealand had scored 22 runs after losing 2 wickets.
When the third day of play started, no one would have thought that the Kiwi team would not be able to cross the 100-run mark. With the day’s play, there was such a flurry of wickets that New Zealand collapsed on the score of just 88 runs. Only 3 New Zealand batsmen could touch double figures. Mitchell Santner played the highest innings of 29 runs. Sri Lankan spinner Prabhat Jayasuriya took 6 wickets in his bag. In this way, Sri Lanka created a big record by gaining a huge lead of 514 runs over New Zealand on the basis of first innings score. In fact, this lead of Sri Lanka is the 5th largest lead achieved on the basis of first innings in the history of Test cricket.
Teams taking maximum lead in first innings in Test
- 702 England vs Australia, The Oval 1938
- 587 South Africa vs Sri Lanka, Colombo SSC 2006
- 570 Pakistan vs New Zealand, Lahore 2002
- 563 England vs West Indies, Kingston 1930
- 514 Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, Galle 2024*
- 509 England vs South Africa, Lord’s 2003
- 504 Australia vs England, Brisbane 1946
Sri Lankan captain Dhananjay de Silva took 5 catches in New Zealand’s first innings. Earlier, only 14 fielders had achieved the feat of taking a combined maximum of 5 catches in an innings in Tests. Now Dhananjay is only the second Sri Lankan fielder in this list. Lahiru Thirimane took 5 catches against England in Galle in 2021. The interesting thing is that Dhananjay took all 5 catches off the ball of the same bowler Prabhat Jayasuriya. This has happened only for the 5th time in the history of Test cricket.
When the fielder/keeper took 5 catches off the ball of the same bowler in a test innings
- Bob Taylor-Ian Botham, England vs India, 1980 – 5 catches
- Mark Boucher-Alan Donald, South Africa v England, 1998 – 5 catches
- Adam Gilchrist -Michael Kasprowicz, Australia vs Sri Lanka, 2004 – 5 catches
- Lahiru Thirimane-Lasith Embuldeniya, Sri Lanka vs England, 2021 – 5 catches
- Dhananjay de Silva-Prabhat Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, 2024 – 5 catches
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