Let’s look at some facts.
The background
Karunaratne is an outstanding player of spin bowling, and is quite fond of batting in Galle. Of his 7092 Test runs, more than 27% have come at this venue. Partly this is a function of Sri Lanka playing a lot of matches here – 21% of Karunaratne’s innings have been in Galle.
Although he is a reluctant sweeper and reverse-sweeper, he has both of these shots in his repertoire. Against spin, he whips through the legside frequently, and goes back to chop it between point and cover just as often.
“I love it when it turns here,” Karunaratne said about one of the most reliably spin-friendly venues on the planet. “With the way I play, and the options I take, it’s much easier for me when it turns.”
Herath, meanwhile, is a spectacular reader of opposition batters’ mindset and intentions. We’re not trying to be mean. But had you ever expected him to be a 433-wicket bowler?
Not long after tea on day three, Herath came down the steps from the visitors’ dressing room to talk to Ajaz Patel. Karunaratne says it was soon after lunch, but he’d barely swept the ball before lunch, so it couldn’t have been.
Here he is describing the situation, but just getting the timing wrong. For the record, Karunaratne was 72 off 109 at tea.
“After lunch? Or maybe it was just before lunch? No, it was after lunch,” Karunaratne said. “At that time, Rangana aiya came down to the ground and gave a message to Ajaz Patel. It was after that they changed the field and the set-up against me.
“They brought square leg up for me, and set the kind of field that we had set for Tom Latham. So when you have that field, you know as a batter that if you get the sweep slightly wrong, it can go up in the air and square leg can catch it, or short fine leg can catch it. It’s with that mentality that Rangana aiya would have told them to do that.”
The result
Not long after tea, Patel sent down a sweepable delivery, Karunaratne got low and tried to sweep it square, but cleanly missed. The ball stayed low, snuck under his shot, and clattered into the stumps.
“I had a little doubt in my head – maybe the sweep will go badly,” Karunaratne said. “These things happen. When the opposition has somebody who knows about how we play, they will share those things. So I was playing with that in my head, and that’s why I couldn’t pick that line, and I tried to sweep the ball too hard.”
It’s true. Karunaratne very rarely gets out sweeping. But then he is up against not just Patel, a fine bowler all on his own terms, but also the intellect of Herath, who has more than 100 wickets at this ground.
Karunaratne was out for 83, which at this stage of his career, feels like too low a score. He has spoken about wanting to get to 20 centuries. He is still stuck on 16.
But he was hustled out of his 17th. And you can almost bet good money on him meeting up with the architect of his downfall and the pair talking it through, when life, and coaching contracts, allows for such a thing.
Andrew Fidel Fernando is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo. @afidelf
