Warrican buoyed by Sobers' message

Strange things must happen on the ride between Galle and the P Sara Oval. Maybe it's a wormhole, or the spells of a highway wizard. More likely, given it is Sri Lanka, it may just be a jarring bump on the road. Because almost every time teams have played a second Test at the P Sara Oval the series takes a turn. Roles are reversed. Shoes switch feet.

Most recently, India's spinners tied Sri Lanka's top order in knots soon after Rangana Herath had scythed through the visitors' top order in Galle. Two months before that, a Tharindu Kaushal spell undid the advantage Yasir Shah had earned Pakistan in the south. Over the years, many deficits had been overcome here - perhaps none so dramatic as the New Zealand resurgence that ended a five-match losing streak in 2012. Cricket is a great leveller they say. The P Sara Oval is an even better one.

West Indies haven't quite extended the trend yet, but in punching through an inexperienced Sri Lanka top order to expose yet more inexperience in the middle, they have ventured a small distance down that well-trod avenue. Where in Galle they had been almost batted out of the game by the end of the first innings, here, they find themselves hanging delicately in it.

Fast bowler Jerome Taylor had woken up with groin stiffness this morning, which sounds like a euphemism for a common biological phenomenon, but was in fact - West Indies management assures us - a cause for concern. He passed a fitness test before the toss, and was quickly zipping the ball around a helpful deck at 140kph. This kind of fast bowling, along with legspin, offspin, and bolt-straight medium pace, has been a particular weakness for the Sri Lanka top order in recent months.

So well-practiced have Sri Lanka become at nicking behind, that they have begun to branch out from the regulation edges, and are exploring ever-more subtle and uncommon branches of the art form. Kaushal Silva's bat kissed the ball so lightly the sound was not heard by on-field umpire Rod Tucker, and had to be overturned on review. Lahiru Thirimanne's replacement, debutant Kusal Mendis, departed similarly, having made almost exactly the kind of score Thirimanne had been making, only at a less laboured pace.

After the quicks had floored Sri Lanka's top order, West Indies produced their most symmetrical counterpoint to their performance in Galle. Having watched their own batsmen get starts and then get dismissed by Sri Lanka's left-arm spinner, they unleashed their own left-arm spinner, who dismissed Sri Lanka's batsmen, who had got starts. Debutant Jomel Warrican wasn't particularly proud of the full toss that earned him his first wicket, via a Kusal Perera bunt back into his hands, but he finished the day with 4 for 67.

"It wasn't a perfect ball to be honest," Warrican said of that delivery. "As a man I rate myself very hard. It was still a good feeling, but not the feeling I've been looking for - if it had been a better ball."

Warrican was similarly dismissive of his entire performance, labelling it "average", but said he had been an inspired man when he took the field in the morning. As far as such ceremonies go, who better to receive your Test cap from than the greatest cricketer alive? Garry Sobers had already spent some time with the West Indies team on Wednesday, but had a special message for Warrican - a fellow Bajan - before the Test.

"The one thing that stuck in my mind of what he said was: 'You have many games to come'. And that he expected great things for me. It felt special for a great man - that those things came out of his mouth. It really warmed my heart. That's the truth."

Encouragingly for West Indies, they held most - though not quite all - of their catches. Kraigg Brathwaite's low catch to dismiss Angelo Mathews at third slip was particularly good, and Denesh Ramdin's stumping of an overbalancing Dilruwan Perera was sharp as well.

But West Indies are far from taking grip of this Test match. The post-stumps press conferences, were, for once, instructive. Hosts' top scorer Milinda Siriwardene thought 200 was a good score on that track, given the assistance it provided the slow bowlers. Warrican worried for West Indies batsmen, who would face plenty of Herath the next day.

But for now at least, West Indies have given themselves some breathing space. Trodden on all four days at Galle, they did a little bit of the treading today in Colombo.