Don’t like to associate his batting with his captainship: Virat Kohli

“Vijay has not fully recovered and we don´t want to take a chance”, Shastri told reporters at the Galle worldwide Stadium. India are employing their five bowler theory as expected and will be playing three spinners. The last time India toured Sri Lanka in 2010, the series ended in a 1-1 draw, and in that scenario Sri Lanka would gain a point, while India would remain on 97 points. Hopefully this series will be similar. He stated this way – “Ind and Sri Lanka is a great rivalry”.

Then Jehan Mubarak departed, who came forward to defend, got an inside edge onto the pad and gave a dolly to short leg. Sri Lanka in a lot of trouble here.

“You don’t need to try something out-of-the-box”.

Sangakkara admitted that although the playing styles of both teams were slightly different there were similarities. You have the classical elegance in of course Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman; we have the same in Marvan (Atapattu) and Mahela. Aravinda De Silva will always be a sentimental favourite for most of the Sri Lankans including me but numbers alone make Kumar a phenomenal achiever.

“We are confident to execute our plans against Sanga and the rest”.

But the bowlers kept up their impressive form to paper over the deficiencies of the batsmen and got some valuable match practice. We are the same. The Indian side will be a slight favorite in this first matchup as the two teams will meet in a total of three tests over the course of the next month. Murali was getting him out for fun. Murali bowled an off-break and Freddie pushed and ran for a single.

As an individual batsman, the skipper is a big-game player, and he will feed off the energetic experience of leading the side. Take Sanath (Jayasuriya), he’s destructive and instilled fear in the opposition.

Sangakkara will begin his 133rd Test on Wednesday against India, at the ground where he made his debut more than 15 years ago, having agreed to delay his retirement for two more matches.

Sangakkara, who is fifth in the all-time scorers list, is head and shoulders above other current Test batsmen. We played together only in the IPL and this is global match.

Both Rohit and Pujara played three Tests down under scoring 173 and 201 runs respectively. He could score only 5 and Ashwin has got India the huge breakthrough. Kithuruwan Vithanage, who played in the first two Tests against Pakistan, has been dropped from the squad.

“We have to be patient with this side”.

While the baton had passed on to him from Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Sydney, this is Kohli’s first full assignment in- charge after the one-off-Test in Bangladesh. So attitudes are pretty similar.

Chasing 259 for a win on a slow track that was offering some turn, Australia were reduced to 178 for six before experienced Callum Ferguson (45 n.o.) and young Adam Zampa (54 off 49 balls) added 80 runs for the seventh wicket in 13.3 overs.