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Joe Root has scores of 42, 62 not out, 143, and 103 so far in this series. In general, he averages 67.55 against Sri Lanka, having hit 186 and a 228 in his last series against this opposition as well, those mammoth scores coming in Galle.He sweeps and reverse-sweeps well, tends to be proactive against the seamers, and on the occasions in which he chooses to defend, has one of the best techniques in the game.It is no surprise, that in the approach to the third Test, much of Sri Lanka’s team discussion has centred around this question: “How do we get Root out?”Related

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According to senior batter and former captain Dimuth Karunaratne, Sri Lanka have rifled through several plans to Root already, but have been forced to go back to square one by Root’s consistent excellence in this series. They are brainstorming again.”We’ve tried a few things against Joe but they were always unsuccessful,” Karunaratne said. “I think the turning points in the matches have been those Joe Root innings. Even when we’ve played at Galle, he’s hit big runs, but the batters around him haven’t scored as heavily. We really need to minimise the runs he’s scoring.”Homework for Sri Lanka’s bowlers is likely to have been dominated by watching replays of Root bat, with analysis of the likeliest strategies that will bring about his dismissal.”We need to look at his past performances more closely, see where he’s got out, and what kinds of things we can do on these pitches. We need to make a new plan based on that.”Counterintuitively, Karunaratne thinks perhaps this can come about by attacking him less.”Maybe sometimes we attack him too much and he takes advantage of that. Some players don’t like it when we ask them to be less aggressive. Sometimes boring batters out can also be a tactic.”Sri Lanka’s other major problem, however, has been the failure of their senior batters, who between them have produced six fifties in 16 combined innings. Karunaratne, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, and Dhananjaya de Silva – have all had a fifty-plus score, and yet have not made significant impressions.”The seniors have talked a lot about how to perform and ease the pressure on the juniors. The juniors have been doing well, especially Kamindu Mendis. Some people adapt very fast to conditions and some struggle. That’s the way the game is. Every game is quite tough.”For Karunaratne, the fact that Root has scored 153 more runs than the next-best England batter, is proof that batting has been difficult.”In England the conditions are tough for batters, and we saw that even their openers struggled, as well as their No. 3. Apart from Joe Root the others also struggled despite this being home conditions for them. We’re playing after a very long time here.”

The West Indian top three of Stafanie Taylor, Hayley Matthews and Shemaine Campbelle ensured a triumphant end to a challenging tour of Sri Lanka, as they anchored a six-wicket win in the third and final T20I in Hambantota to complete a come-from-behind 2-1 series win.Campbelle remained unbeaten at the end on a 30-ball 41 as West Indies chased down a target of 142 with just one ball to spare. The margin of victory however belies the control the visitors exuded in the chase.Taylor and Mathews put on a 60-run opening stand in just 48 deliveries, after which Matthews paired up with Campbelle for a 44-ball 51-run stand. When Matthews fell, trapped leg before attempting to swipe one from Kawya Kavindi across the line, the West Indies were on 111 for 2.With the requirement at roughly run-a-ball, Campbelle navigated the remainder of the chase expertly. The late wickets of Chedean Nation and Aaliyah Alleyne in the 18th and 19th overs conjured some late drama – both dismissed trying to hit out – but some smart running in the final over when just six runs were required ensured there were no further blips.Earlier, having put Sri Lanka in to bat, West Indies got off to the ideal start dismissing Vishmi Gunaratne off just the second ball of the innings, the aggressive 18-year-old top-edging an attempted pull of Chinelle Henry.Chamari Athapaththu and Harshitha Samarawickrama however responded well to the early setback with a partnership of 55 off 54, before Samarawickrama chipped one back to Afy Fletcher. This was followed by a 25-ball stand of 34 between Athapaththu and Kavisha Dilhari, but then Athapaththu would also fall, caught excellently in the deep by Shamilia Connell – making up for her drop of the same batter a short while earlier.Athapaththu’s wicket in the 14th over and Dilhari’s (26 off 22) in the 16th – caught brilliantly by a leaping Henry at mid-off – fell at inopportune moments for the hosts, just as they might have been looking to accelerate.Some late blows from Ama Kanchana and Nilakshi de Silva pushed the total to 141, but Player of the Series Matthews and co eventually made light work of what could have been a tricky chase.

Will Smeed smashed 86 off 48 balls to lead Somerset to a 108-run Vitality Blast South Group victory over Glamorgan at the Cooper Associates County Ground, Taunton.The opener blitzed nine fours and five sixes to dominate the home side’s innings of 193 for 8 after losing the toss. Craig Overton contributed 42, while Dan Douthwaite claimed three wickets in an over to finish with 4 for 37 from four.In reply, Glamorgan could muster only 85 all out, Sam Northeast top scoring with 24 and Lewis Gregory taking 3 for 11 to become Somerset’s equal leading wicket-taker in T20 cricket.Somerset’s innings was a rollercoaster, starting well, dipping dramatically and finishing strongly. Smeed and Tom Banton produced an opening stand of 38 inside four overs before Banton was bowled by a full delivery from Timm van der Gugten.It was 51 for 1 at the end of the six-over powerplay as Smeed took centre stage, dominating a second-wicket stand of 54 inside six overs with an out-of-sorts Tom Kohler-Cadmore, who fell to a boundary catch off Andy Gorvin for nine.By then, Smeed had gone to a brilliant 30-ball half-century with a pulled four to fine leg off Douthwaite. He celebrated by clearing the rope in the same area next ball and Somerset looked on course for a 200-plus score.That changed in the 12th over, which saw Douthwaite send back Tom Abell, Sean Dickson and Gregory with the second, fourth and sixth deliveries, Dickson to a brilliant one-handed catch by Jamie McIlroy at mid-on. When Ben Green was caught and bowled by Mason Crane at the start of the following over four wickets had fallen in the space of seven balls.Smeed, who had looked on course for his second T20 century, was bowled by a full-length ball from Douthwaite and Somerset were seven down with more than six overs of their innings left. Overton and Roelof van der Merwe showed their experience by steadying the ship before a late assault, which saw Overton hit sixes over long-off and long-on, the latter sending the ball sailing into the River Tone.A half-century stand off 30 balls gave the hosts momentum going into Glamorgan’s reply, which saw Overton dismiss Kiran Carlson, caught at third man in the first over, and Riley Meredith send down a wicket-maiden, having former Somerset player Eddie Byrom caught behind for a duck.Marnus Labuschagne and Northeast took the score to 37 by the end of the powerplay, but the second ball of the seventh over saw Labuschagne fall lbw to Gregory aiming to leg. Colin Ingram then guided an Overton delivery straight to gully to leave Glamorgan 43 for 4.Northeast miscued an attempted scoop shot off Gregory to Jake Ball at short fine-leg and when Douthwaite offered the same bowler a tame return catch Somerset’s captain had equalled leg-spinner Max Waller’s record of 139 T20 wickets for the county.Van der Gugten clothed a Ball delivery to cover and Chris Cooke was superbly caught by Green on the cover boundary at the end of the same over to make it 71 for eight.Gorvin delayed the inevitable with a couple of belligerent blows, but left-arm spinner van der Merwe wrapped up the result, taking wickets with his only two balls of the innings.

After a 12-year period in which India won every Test series they played at home, they have now lost two out of three in the space of just over a year: 3-0 last year to New Zealand, and now 2-0 to South Africa. These results have coincided with the tenure of Gautam Gambhir, who took over as India head coach in July 2024.Asked whether he still believed he was the right man for the job, particularly in Test cricket, Gambhir said he wasn’t the man to take that call.”It is up to BCCI to decide,” he said during his press conference after India lost the second Test against South Africa in Guwahati by 408 runs. “I’ve said it during my first press conference when I took over as the head coach. Indian cricket is important, I’m not important. And I sit here and say exactly the same thing.”Related

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All the focus on the home defeats to New Zealand and South Africa, Gambhir suggested, was taking away from his achievements as head coach, including a 2-2 Test-series draw in England and white-ball victories in the Champions Trophy and Asia Cup this year.”I’m the same guy who got results in England as well, with a young team,” he said. “And I’m sure you guys will forget very soon because a lot of people keep talking about New Zealand. And I’m the same guy under whom [we] won Champions Trophy and Asia Cup as well.”Yes, this is a team which has less experience. They need to keep learning and they’re putting [in] everything possible to turn the tide.”Between the home defeats to New Zealand and South Africa, India have undergone a major transition, with R Ashwin, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retiring from Test cricket, and with Shubman Gill taking over the captaincy. India’s batting, in particular, has been manned by a number of young, inexperienced players.”Look, first of all, the series against New Zealand, we had a very different side,” Gambhir said. “And this is a very different side. The experience that that batting line-up had [compared] to what this team has is chalk and cheese. So comparing everything to New Zealand is probably a wrong narrative.”I don’t give excuses. I’ve never done that in the past. I will never do it in the future as well. But four or five batters in this top eight have literally played less than 15 Test matches [each], and they will grow. They’re learning on the job. They’re learning on the field.”Test cricket is never easy when you’re playing against a top-quality side. So you’ve got to give them time as well. So for me, I think that is something they’ll keep learning. That is important. Because I know that I hate using this word transition. This is exactly what transition is.”The defeat in Guwahati was India’s heaviest by a runs margin in Test cricket. Gambhir pointed to their collapse on day three, when they slipped from 95 for 1 to 122 for 7 in reply to South Africa’s 489, as the passage of play that decided the Test. Fast bowler Marco Jansen took four of the six wickets India lost in that phase.”From 95 for 1 to 120 for 7 is not acceptable,” Gambhir said. “And we keep talking about [India’s batting against] spin, but then one seamer got four wickets in that spell. And we’ve had these collapses in the past as well. Someone needs to put their hand up and say that I’m going to stop this collapse.4:35

Philander: ‘Harmer out-bowled the Indian spinners’

“For me, I think that 30-minute spell took us away from the game. Because at one stage on day three, we were pretty much in control of the game where we were 95 for 1. And then, from there, to lose five or six wickets for nothing on the board literally was always pushing us back.”One of the batters dismissed during that collapse was stand-in captain Rishabh Pant, who charged out to Jansen while on 7, and top-edged a slog to the keeper. Gambhir refused to criticise Pant or any other individual player, he seemed to refer to that shot when he answered a different question about how a coach could measure accountability after a defeat like this.”It comes from care. How much you care about the dressing room and the team,” Gambhir said. “Because accountability and the game situation can never be taught. You can talk about skills, you can work on skills, you can keep talking about the mental aspect of the game, but ultimately when you go in, if you keep putting the team ahead of your own self, not thinking, ‘this is how I play, and this is how I will get the results, I don’t have plan B,’ so sometimes you will get these kind of collapses as well.”So for me I think accountability is important. More than the accountability, it’s the care. How much you care about Indian cricket and how much you care about the team and people sitting in the dressing room is important as well.”As for the wider question of how India can lift themselves out of this near-unprecedented trough as a Test team in their own conditions, Gambhir said it would come from putting Test cricket first.”Start prioritising Test cricket, if we are really, really serious about Test cricket,” he said. “That is going to happen overall where everyone needs to be the stakeholder. So if we really care about Test cricket, if we want Test cricket to flourish in India, I think we’ve got to have a collective effort to make that happen. Because just blaming the players or just blaming the support staff or just blaming certain individuals will not help.”And as I just said, we can’t put things under the carpet. Come the white-ball formats, if you get runs in white-ball formats, suddenly you forget about what you have done in red-ball cricket. That should never happen.”You don’t need the most skillful and the most flamboyant players to succeed in Test cricket. You need the toughest characters with limited skills who will go on to succeed in Test cricket irrespective of how the conditions [are] and what the situation is.”One major area for concern for India is their spinners getting outbowled by their South African counterparts, Simon Harmer in particular. Asked whether India would need to dip into their pool of domestic cricketers to find new spinners, Gambhir said the ones currently in the team needed to be backed and allowed to gain more experience, with the long-serving Ashwin having retired late last year. He pointed specifically to Washington Sundar, who has taken 36 wickets in his first 17 Tests at an average of 32.97.”Look, that’s why we are giving as many opportunities as we can to someone like Washy. But if you expect Washy to deliver straightaway what Ashwin did after playing more than 100 Test matches, it’s unfair on that young kid. And that is what you guys need to think as well. That he is what — 10, 12, 15 Test matches old?”He is learning his trade. He is learning to bowl in different conditions. He is learning to bowl in different situations as well. And obviously, it’s tough when you lose so many experienced players at the same time.”And that is why it is called transition. That is why these guys need time. Whether it’s the batting unit or the bowling unit. I don’t think ever in Indian cricket something like this has happened where the transition is happening in the spin-bowling department and in the batting department as well. Normally when your batting is secure or your batting has experience then your team goes through a bowling transition. But with this Test team, obviously the transition is happening in both the skillsets.”So you guys and all of us need to give them time and I am sure they have got the skill, they have got the talent, they have got the ability. That’s why they are sitting in that dressing room and they have delivered.

A brief shower cut short South Africa’s training session on Saturday night, and the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday could also see some rain. The forecast, however, isn’t too bleak; a washout seems unlikely.Soon after India came out to warm up and play football around 2pm local time at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Saturday, it got overcast, and the covers came on as a precautionary measure, with one of the nets quickly taken down. It didn’t rain then, and the players and support staff hung around near the dugout for over an hour. Some parts of the ground still looked a little damp from earlier showers, with Navi Mumbai having experienced rain through the week.The players gradually returned to the ground just before 5pm with the nets put back up. It wasn’t a full-fledged training session, with only some of the players training, and was wrapped up in an hour.