Sri Lanka v India

At R. Premadasa Stadium, Colombo, September 29 (day/night). No result. Toss: Sri Lanka.

The north-east monsoon had ignored the cricket for 17 days but when it finally made an evening appearance at the Premadasa, an hour was enough to consign the match to pointlessness. Sehwag had biffed his way through the second over but there was no doubting that Sri Lanka's slow bowlers would have asked vexing questions of the batsmen had the game continued, especially on a tortoise-slow surface where Harbhajan and Sehwag had tied Sri Lanka down with off-spin. Atapattu, who added insult to Srinath's jetlag - he had just flown in from Leicestershire - during the course of his 34, and Jayasuriya had given the crowd plenty to cheer, and at 155 for one in the 31st over, 300 looked on. But then Jayasuriya, who had motored to 74 after a shaky start, miscued a pull off Agarkar and was brilliantly held on the dive by Harbhajan. Thereafter, spin held sway despite a half-century from Sangakkara, who started like the Duracell bunny but ran out of charge as the pitch slowed. The injudicious reverse sweep that ended his innings was symptomatic of the batsmen's frustration. Tendulkar epitomised India's Jekyll-and-Hyde performance in the field, diving like Gordon Banks to catch Jayawardene but also dropping two clangers.