F
ifty Tests have been played at Galle. Spin usually gets the last laugh here, and visiting batting line-ups tend to leave with their tails between their legs. Not this time, or at least not yet. Sri Lanka closed day four on 84 for four, chasing 372, and the mood in the India camp by stumps was somewhere between relief and quiet disbelief.
Sonal Dinusha and Dhananjaya de Silva are still there, unbeaten on 25 and 31, having somehow survived a session that saw four wickets go down in under three hours. Manav Suthar did most of the damage. Jadeja bowled tight, took nothing, and didn't seem to mind. Siraj and Prasidh Krishna chipped in early with the new ball. Nobody in blue is saying it out loud, but a target this size, on a surface turning more by the hour, doesn't get chased down here very often. It basically never does.
Every match needs one name that sticks, and this one belongs to Devdutt Padikkal. He only got the nod because Sai Sudharsan went down injured before the series. Three days in, that looks like the best thing that could have happened to him. He reached his maiden Test hundred on Independence Day, the first Indian to manage that particular trivia footnote, and kept going. Overnight 131 turned into 167 by the time Nuwantha finally got him. That's the highest score by an Indian number three against Sri Lanka since Dravid made 177 back in 2017, and it puts him next to Dravid and Pujara on a very short list of Indians who've crossed 150 from that spot against this opposition.
He wasn't done, either. A second-innings 44 pushed his match total to 211, the best by an Indian No. 3 against Sri Lanka since Dravid's 215 in 2009, five runs short of that record. Only Sehwag, with 251 in a Galle Test years ago, has scored more here for India. Padikkal spent long enough on the outside looking in. This is the kind of week that rewrites how people talk about a career, whether he ever says so himself or not.
Pant's week has been noisier. His first-innings dismissal, three charges down the pitch at a debutant off-spinner within the first over of the new ball, drew a pointed line from Mohammad Kaif about him lacking basic cricketing sense in that moment. Social media did what social media does. Calls to drop him, the usual.
Then he walked out in the second innings and made 66 at close to a run a ball. Same player, same instincts, different result. Whether that squares the ledger with his critics is a separate question. What it did do was turn a workable target into one that looks genuinely out of reach for Sri Lanka right now.
None of it matters much without the bowling, and India's did plenty before Pant even got going. Bowled out for 462 in the first innings on the back of Padikkal's hundred, they came back and dismissed Sri Lanka for 284 despite a Dinusha century, Suthar and Jadeja splitting seven wickets between them for a 178-run lead. Add Pant's second-innings hitting and that became 372. No side has chased that many in the fourth innings of a Test at this ground. Ever.
Both teams came into this series stuck around mid-table in the World Test Championship, needing something close to a clean sweep to keep any real hope of the final alive. It's also India's 600th Test, at a ground playing host to its 50th, for whatever that's worth to anyone besides the record books. Gill won only his third toss in nine tries as captain and chose to bat first on a pitch with even grass cover. Four days on, that call looks smart.
Sri Lanka aren't dead yet. De Silva has pulled off rescue acts before, and there are wickets in hand. But six down with 288 still needed, on a pitch gripping harder every session, is a big ask against this attack.
Sri Lanka go into the final day of the Galle Test 84 for four, chasing 372 against India. Devdutt Padikkal's 167 and 44 have made him the standout of the match, edging closer to Dravid's all-time record for an Indian No. 3 against Sri Lanka. Rishabh Pant followed up a criticised first-innings dismissal with a rapid 66. Suthar and Jadeja shared seven wickets to give India a 178-run first-innings lead, and Sri Lanka now face a target no side has ever successfully chased at this ground.
