The risky business of India's allrounders

India are still 253 runs ahead of Sri Lanka after day two in Colombo and the team believes a lead of 100 would be good enough to push the game into series-levelling territory. That very idea will allow its fans the overnight dream of India's bowlers turning into ravenous predators on Saturday morning.

A day of tight, disciplined bowling reflected in Sri Lanka's cautious crawl and will give the Indians much satisfaction. But they will wait for the sessions when their accepted arithmetic becomes proven fact. Involving fractions into Test cricket is a risky business. They do not show up on the scoreboard - neither as runs nor as wickets. The collective bits and pieces of India's 'aspirational allrounders' have not added up to a larger and impactful whole yet.

One of the two Stuart Binny, described by his team director as the "half" of India's "four-and-half bowlers" set, has had a miserable time of it in both departments. The other, it must be officially recorded before the trolls are beset by fits of rage, is doing nine-tenths of his job as lead spinner; the missing one-tenth in R Ashwin's batting leaves an inconvenient hole in the lower order.

Binny was meant to be the 'seam-bowling allrounder' and at the start of the series, Kohli said India were looking to "cement" Ashwin in the team as an "allrounder rather than a bowler who can bat because he has the ability." The larger plan was to have the top five batters take on the burden of scoring, "till the time the guys lower down get more confident."

Binny's confidence and optimism would have taken a beating, after a nightmare start with the bat on Thursday. His two bowling spells on Friday proved he could, as expected, swing the new ball and handsomely at that, and control the run-flow with a slightly older one. He bowled a second spell that read 5-1-7-0. Binny and Mishra pulled off quite a squeeze on Kaushal Silva - 15 runs in 10 overs - and the batsman eventually succumbed to Mishra.

Yet as Silva trudged on towards his fifty, lingering over Binny's manful offerings there remained a sense of what could have been. Or how it was happening at all.

In Binny's second Test at Lord's last year, a catch off Gary Ballance flew between wicketkeeper MS Dhoni and first slip Shikhar Dhawan, both frozen. The first over of his next Test, Binny had Silva caught behind for 14, off a no-ball. Bowling at approximately 120kph, far from 6ft 6in in height, no matter his remarkable fitness, such mistakes should not happen. His bowling coach B Arun said, "I know, he bowled exceptionally well today but again, it's a big lesson for him. Losing a Test wicket to a no-ball. You've got to get back and work so that you don't make the same mistake again. It's a costly lesson."

Binny still awaits his first Test wicket while Ashwin, for his part, has had a far more storied career and does not appear to socialise with self-doubt. His batting average is nearly 34 from 26 Tests, including two centuries and four fifties. Post the tour of Australia, his scores with the bat have read: 2*, 7, 3 and today's rather crushing 2. His dismissal this morning, off the seventh ball he faced was, to use a southern-hemisphere expression, an utter fizzer. A forward dob off Matthews towards the man standing there at short extra cover for precisely that kind of error; the visitors' tent may have felt a bit frosty when he returned. In the P Sara XI, only Ishant Sharma (64) Virat Kohli (36) and M Vijay (32) have played more Tests.

At the other end, was India's third aspirational all rounder, who cannot possibly fill in the sizeable boots he is supposed to. But Wriddhiman Saha has tried to make a decent fist of it. He has scored his first two fifties in Test cricket on this tour. He had begun brightly on Thursday evening, but as the Sri Lankan bowlers returned energised, his struggles were hair-raising. But he stayed put. The Gods were on his side: in the space of 10 balls, first a Dhammika Prasad beauty brushing his stump but failed to dislodge a bail. Then a caught behind off the same bowler couldn't be proven cleanly taken; Saha had not moved from his overnight score of 19.

He survived the final traces of the new ball, worked through difficulties in his timing, tackled Prasad's swing and the pace of a fired-up Dushantha Chameera. He played three scoring strokes off Prasad's 18 balls and seven off 24 from Chameera. He scored 43 off his 56 runs off the spinners and put up a robust eighth-wicket partnership of 46 with Amit Mishra. Could he be the full-time sucker-for-punishment No. 6 with an appetite for perpetual toil with the lower order? Saha, it must be remembered, is in only his seventh Test.

India's most successful allrounder of late, not that we have recovered from the departure of Kapil Dev, is of course, MS Dhoni, who scored 4876 averaged 38 in his 90 Tests. He has six Test centuries and 18 of his 33 half centuries were scored away from home. Plus 256 catches, 38 stumpings.

At the moment what India are offering their cricket are not regular, respectable All Rounders in capital letters, but a smattering of allrounder lite. Just like two wrongs don't make a right, three lites don't make a regular. Allrounder that is.