West Indies have rattled Sri Lanka on the first day of the first Test being played at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua. Sri Lanka were bundled out for mere 169 runs while in reply Windies survived the day without suffering any loss of wicket.
West Indies packed up their bowling with four pacers in Kemar Roach, Shannon Gabriel, Jason Holder, and Alzarri Joseph. Kraig Brathwaite won the all-important toss in his first Test as a full-time skipper of the West Indies and decided to unleash his pacers on the tourists batting line up.
Windies bowlers were wayward to start with Roach mend his course quickly enough to keep Sri Lankan openers Dimuth Karunaratne and Lahiru Thirimanne on their toes. The length of the attack was corrected to fuller as both the openers rallied on some luck.
Braithwaite moved to Rakheem Conwall’s off-spin in only the sixth over of the game in a move that would have raised many eyebrows then. However, the off-spinner vindicated the move getting rid of Lankan skipper Karunaratne with his usual extra bounce.
Windies captain got another chance to become an instant hero when Oshado Fernando and Thirimanne misjudged a single, and Brathwaite found the former out of his crease with a bullet direct hit at the batting end.
With two wickets down for nothing, the onus was on the pair of Dinesh Chandimal and Dhananjaya de Silva to bail Sri Lanka out of trouble in absence of Angelo Mathews and failure for skipper Karunaratne. However, Jason Holder and Roach came in with some other ideas and bowled with immaculate control over line and length which was missing in the first spell.
A bit of movement away from the off stump accounted for Chandimal while Dhananjaya looked really greedy for big booming drives having already hit two. A nip backer sneaked through the big gap between his pad and bat and disturbed the furniture behind him and also Sri Lanka’s spirit on the very first day of the game.
Pathum Nissanka could not stand up tall and provide any sort of resistance to the Roach-Holder duo as an edge behind the wicket was snaffled smartly by the latter.
With five wickets down before the 100 run-mark, Sri Lanka were in deep trouble and needed someone to bat for some period of time with Thirimanne who was batting with amicable patience and determination.
Niroshan Dickwella got the opportunity to enhance his reputation once again and he got the best out of it by stitching a vital 58 runs partnership with the opener. He played in his counterattacking style to put some pressure off his partner and Thirimanne reached a well-deserved fifty of 128 balls.
Dickwella could not last long though and perished due to indiscipline outside off stump and his wicket brought about a catastrophic collapse of the lower order as the tourists were blown away from 150-6 to 169 out.
Jason Holder picked up a richly deserving fifer on his return in the longest format for the Windies while Kemar Roach was not far behind with a three-wicket haul.
Holder’s control with the ball and assurances with the bat could well have the reason Brathwaite could take a big call of playing only five batsmen and asking Joshua Da Silva to bat the number six position.
Sri Lanka will have to strike early on the second day and they can’t allow Windies batsmen to get away with some loose balls. Karunaratne will have his tasks cut out once again as the captain of the side who does not have too many runs to play with a bowling line up that is so thin on experience.