Ouch!! We had only 6 players

Sri Lanka were made to surrender in little more than 2 days to Australia in the Boxing Day test match. They were unfortunate to lose three of their players to injuries – Sangakkara, Welegedara, and P. Jayawardene.

This is only the second time in cricket history that a team has been bowled out after losing 7 or fewer wickets.  The previous instance of this happened between India and West Indies way back in 1976. Gaekwad, Bedi, Vishwanath, Patel and Chandrasekar were all lost to injuries as India were bowled out in second innings, losing only 5 wickets.

Wisden reported that the injuries were due to the unpredictability of bounce, saying:

It was the unpredictability of bounce that contributed to the unsafe manner in which the Indian batsmen took evasive action and, consequently, suffered nasty injuries.

Holding took use of this opportunity by exploiting the uneven bounce, and bowled around the wicket to reduce the room for batsman to make any sort of contact. Though matches can be called off citing the improper behaviour of the pitch, that did not happen.

This is not to say that there was no short-pitched bowling. There was a surfeit of it — overdone, in fact, to the extent where the umpires should have intervened.

At the end of day, Holding’s brilliant-yet-unfair spell fetched the West Indies another win.

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