Even if it were a flat pitch, there was work to be done for India and reward for those who had the patience to extract the most out of it.
suresh raina sachin tendulkar
The day's highlights were without doubt Sachin Tendulkar scoring his fifth Test double century even as Suresh Raina converted the good start on debut to go on and actually join the list of cricketers who made century on debut.
What it did was virtually wipe out Sri Lanka's first innings, although even Mahendra Singh Dhoni's seventy-six runs helped actually surpass the mark.
On a day of expected runs pile on, records were perhaps the only thing really looked forward to, with draw looking increasingly more like a reality than a possibility. It gave the two batsmen the opportunity to make the most, having settled in rather well on the flat bed of a pitch at the SSC in Colombo in the second Test of India's tour of Sri Lanka.
What it did though was keep the statisticians busy with Tendulkar at the crease. But to force a result in the match, Sri Lanka would have had to bat rather fast or fail rather quickly. Either way, for that India's innings would have had to close. But at close on the fourth day, India was going on, at 669 for nine, leading by twenty-seven runs.
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