The wait and weight of Day 2 in Galle

The Galle cricket stadium began Day 2 under wraps in its entirety. An early start by 15 minutes was meant to cover up some of the overs lost on Day 1, but the gloomy morning only threatened to add to the backlog. It rained in fragments, the sun and dark clouds played peekaboo, and the ground staff, who'd seen this movie before, stayed patient and competent all through.

For nearly five hours of the day, they moved like an ensemble from a well-rehearsed dance troupe, gliding and manoeuvring in admirable sync, each knowing where to go and what step to unfurl. Batches of 20 split off in different directions, taking charge of large sheets of covers beneath them. Not a blade of grass was to be soiled, however fickle the weather remained. They picked up the covers and ran out, sprinted back in with them, and seemed bound by both the urgency and the whims of the intermittent showers that tend to hit this part of the country at this time of the year.

It wasn't just all cardio. There was also a lot of calculation. Around 11 AM, more than an hour since the scheduled start time, the skies started to clear. Some of the covers were off and the stumps were in place. Sri Lanka's spin bowling coach Jordan Gregory walked around the pitch, looking for clues to pass on to his spinners.

Sitanshu Kotak made his way to the middle when the stumps were taken out and the covers came back on despite there being no rain. This was a pre-emptive move against the notorious dark clouds expected to head their way. Kotak had a word with the ground staff, as did Gautam Gambhir shortly after, but the bottom line was the same: they and the players just had to wait and surrender to the overheads timetable.

Devdutt Padikkal knows a thing or two about waiting. There were 260 days between his first and second Test appearance in 2024. Between his second and third, he'd waited 631. In the interim, Padikkal became captain of his Ranji side, piled on the runs, dragged them to a final and won two IPL titles with RCB while proving extremely resourceful at No.3. In this Test, he'd already made a compelling case that No.3 could be his place in this format too.

Padikkal's challenge today, besides all the waiting, wasn't really technical. It was to show that he wanted more than just to tick a box marked century. Batters don't often admit to wanting a personal milestone, but surely even Padikkal would've known, walking out at 2:35 PM with the sun finally out and staying put, that a double century was within touching distance.

But even as he continued to find the rhythms of Day 1, the Test started to whirl in a different direction. Fans who'd settled on the grass banks and had previously been forced to run for cover from the rain were now standing by the boundary hoarding, trying to become one with the game. A compressed Day 2 promised a quicker give and take between the two teams, and they were all for it. Padikkal, though, didn't bite. Rishabh Pant, as is his wont, did.

Sri Lanka took the new ball as soon as it was available and handed it to their debutant off-spinner Nuwantha Keshara. Pant responded by trying to tonk it out of shape before a pacer could zip in with it from the other end. This risk-reward game was right up his alley, but he paid the price for it by skewing a big shot and giving Keshara his maiden Test wicket. The fast-tracked give-and-take had officially begun.

This reunited the Day 1 protagonists. KL Rahul arrived free of cramps and limitations. He needed 23 for a ton; Padikkal was 62 away from 200. Another stand, a couple more milestones, all under the bright sun, now seemed there for the taking. But then one of Shubman Gill's premonitions about the pitch came to life. He'd compared the Galle surface to the one served up at Wankhede in Mumbai, where spinners could deceive with extra bounce and close-in catchers could come into play. They did, for Rahul. Forward push, inside edge and gone. For 82.

But Padikkal remained rooted in his Day 1 ways. He'd played more than 200 balls and yet flexed a control percentage of nearly 90 on the front foot and more than that off the back foot. Prabath Jayasuriya was then introduced to try a different angle. The left-arm spinner brought his backward square leg a few spaces in and tried to push Padikkal into playing another one of his sweep shots, which the centurion had used generously through his innings. This time Padikkal didn't. He saw the field switch and went for a reverse sweep towards third man. On the next ball, he was gone, stumped off a quicker, flatter variation that he stepped out to and missed.

Events began to stack up quickly from this point on. Dhruv Jurel channelled his experience of hitting big in Galle just last month (141*, 53) with a 66-ball 50 that furthered India's innings. Oddly enough, this coincided with Sri Lanka's most productive phase of the game. India lost four wickets in the last 15 overs of the day while adding 70 runs. Once again, there was plenty of give, and a sizeable amount of take.

When the players walked off at stumps, both camps would've had reasons to be bullish. India had the runs; Sri Lanka had their belief back. And in a compressed day of 43 overs, the Galle Test took a leap and a half. The wait added weight.

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