Opener Pathum Nissanka fit an unbeaten 146 as Sri Lanka tightened their grip on the second day of their second and final Test against Bangladesh at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground in Colombo on Thursday.
The hosts were 290-2 at stumps, a lead of 43 on the back of Nissanka鈥檚 sparkling innings off 238 balls after the visitors were all out for 247 runs in their first innings.
Nissanka found an able partner in former skipper Dinesh Chandimal, who scored a fluent 93 before a lapse in judgement saw him lose his wicket minutes before stumps after the duo put on 194 runs together.
Bangladesh resumed the day on 220-8 and lasted 8.3 overs, with overnight batter Taijul Islam the last man out for 33, caught off debutant Sonal Dinusha鈥檚 left-arm spin.
Dinusha was the peak of the Sri Lankan bowlers with 3-22, while pacer Asitha Fernando also claimed 3-51.
The Bangladesh bowlers faced a challenging day on the field, managing to claim only two wickets throughout the 78 overs they bowled.
The SSC wicket remained as flat as ever, and the Sri Lankan batters did not repeat the mistakes made by their Bangladeshi counterparts that led to their dismissals.
They even began with keeping their feet on the pedal as the first 10 overs yielded 55 runs for the hosts.
Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Taijul kept things tight for the remainder of the first session, but the wickets were hard to come by.
Finally, Bangladesh got the much-needed breakthrough after the lunch break, thanks to Taijul, who trapped Lahiru Udana lbw for 40 to break the 88-run opening partnership.
But Chandimal and Nissanka took all the spirit away as they made Bangladeshi bowlers toil hard.
Nissanka scored fifty off 79 balls before reaching his fourth hundred in 167 balls. Having narrowly missed out on a double hundred by 13 runs in the first Test, the in-form opener was now on track for redemption.
Chandimal, however, would be itching his head as he missed out on the hundred by just seven runs while attempting a reverse sweep off Nayeem Hasan, who gave away 45 runs in his eight overs.
But the Lankans were even harder on the Bangladesh pace duo Nahid Rana and Ebadot Hosain, who both remained wicketless in their combined 19 overs after giving away 87 runs.
Bangladesh head coach Phil Simmons admitted that it was pretty tough for his team out there.
鈥業 think it was a hard day of Test cricket,鈥� he said after the day鈥檚 play. 鈥楾he wicket got a lot easier. It was nice to bat today. We struggled to get wickets, which is expected on a good surface, so it was a difficult day for the bowlers,鈥� said Simmons after the day鈥檚 play.
The former West Indies all-rounder claimed that the wicket got better on the second day.
He said, 鈥楾he wicket definitely improved. On the first day, it was a bit sticky and slightly two-paced. Today, it got a lot better, and we saw how easy it was for the batters. There wasn鈥檛 as much turn as yesterday, and the batters batted well. That鈥檚 what Test cricket is about sometimes.鈥�
But he rued that the failures in the batting in the first innings would haunt them.
鈥榃here we missed a trick was not building big partnerships yesterday,鈥� said Simmons.
鈥楢s a result, we went into today with only two or three wickets in hand. It comes back to our batting and the partnerships we failed to build.鈥�
