India vs Sri Lanka, 2nd Test: top 5 performers
In a one sided Test match played between India and Sri Lanka at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur, the home team convincingly defeated the visitors by an innings and 239 runs.
The Indian team played a dominant role in the match from the very beginning, as they bundled up the opponents at a score of 205 on the first day. Then, it was all about the Indian batting, in which a total of four hundreds (including one double-hundred) were scored, and they declared their innings on 610 for the loss of six wickets. It was then just a matter of time, as the Indian bowlers wrapped up the SL batting at a score of 166 and took a 1-0 lead in the series.
There were some spectacular displays of both batting and bowling by the players in the match.
Let’s look at five players who stood apart from the others.
Virat Kohli
The Indian skipper was once again at his very best in the Nagpur Test. The “Run Machine” batted with an aggressive approach in the first innings and scored his career’s fifth double hundred.
Kohli came down in the third session of the second day, and scored a quick fire half century before the day was concluded. The next day, he batted with the same attitude, and always looked for scoring runs at a quick pace. While Pujara anchored the innings at the other end, Kohli played the role of an aggressor, and reached to the hundred run mark with a strike-rate of 76.92.
The Indian captain did not stop there, and accumulated even more runs for the team, which made the the team's intentions about batting only once and winning the match with an innings difference clear from the start.
Kohli reached the 200-run mark in the 168th over of the innings, when the score of the team was already more than 550. He scored 213 runs in 267 balls at a strike rate of 79.78, before he was dismissed by Dilruwan Perera.
Kohli became the first captain to score 10 international hundreds in a calendar year, and got past Ricky Ponting, who had scored 9 hundreds in a calendar year twice. For his magnificient performance, he was given the Man of the Match award.