On Wednesday, August 7, at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, India and Sri Lanka will play their third One-Day International. India, who are currently behind the three-match series 0-1, need to win this match. Rishabh Pant and Riyan Parag took the places of KL Rahul and Arshdeep Singh.
Maheesh Theekshana was given a reprieve when Rishabh Pant committed an unusual error behind the stumps in the penultimate over of the first innings.
When Kuldeep Yadav bowled the final ball of the 49th over, an incident happened.
Stepping out, the Sri Lankan spinner attempted a wide swing across the line. When Kuldeep spotted him approaching, he sent the ball wide outside off-stump. The ball stayed low and found its way to Pant, who needed to keep his base low in order to catch it. However, Pant waited too long to remove the bails as Theekshana returned to the crease after performing his job admirably for the initial part.
Theekshana began to walk before the third umpire called a play, thinking, perhaps, that he was out of ideas. Even though Theekshana’s bat was in the air when Pant removed the bails, it made little difference because Theekshana had grounded it inside the crease prior to its bounce.
World class Wicketkeeping By Our PR Boy Rishabh Pant 🤡#INDvsSL || #KLRahul
— 𝑨𝑹𝑴𝑨𝑵 (@CoolBoyArman01) August 7, 2024
With the toss, Sri Lanka chose to bat first for the third time in the series, and they were off to a great start. Before the former left after scoring a solid forty-five, Pathum Nissanka and Avishka Fernando contributed 89 runs off 119 balls. On his way to a 102-ball 96, though, Avishka persisted in combining caution and attack. After he and Kusal Mendis had a partnership of 82 runs off of 94 balls, Sri Lanka was leading 171/1 in the 36th over. But the tourists recovered well enough to grab the next five wickets at a cost of just 28 runs.
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On a difficult track, Kusal and Kamindu Mendis played brilliantly in the final overs, assisting the hosts in reaching a respectable score of 248/7. In his first ODI, Riyan Parag emerged as India’s best bowler, finishing with 3/54 in nine overs.