Sri Lanka were 90 for 5 at Galle, and Dinusha’s maiden hundred still left them 178 behind
India took all five wickets to fall in the morning session at Galle, then spent the rest of the third day watching a 25-year-old make his first Test century. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 284, and rain took the evening before India could bat again.
Aug 17, 2026
Sri Lanka were 90 for 5 in the morning session at Galle, staring at a follow-on and a Test that had already got away from them. They finished the third day 284 all out and 178 behind, and the man who dragged them there was a 25-year-old whose Test career is 14 months old.
India’s 462 took four balls to finish
India resumed on 460 for 9 and lasted four deliveries. Asitha Fernando went short at Prasidh Krishna, who gloved a pull through to Niroshan Dickwella behind the stumps and departed for 2, leaving Kuldeep Yadav stranded on 13. The innings closed on 462 in 116.4 overs.
The bulk of it belonged to Devdutt Padikkal, whose 167 was his first Test hundred. KL Rahul made 82 and Dhruv Jurel 51, and Prabath Jayasuriya finished with 4 for 109 across a long shift. Keshara Nuwantha, playing his first Test, took three.
Five down before the ball went soft
Mohammed Siraj needed two balls of the reply, an outswinger that Nishan Madushka edged to first slip. Manav Suthar, in only his second Test, then struck with his first delivery of the innings, the ball drifting in and turning away to take Dinesh Chandimal’s glove on the way to Rishabh Pant. Kuldeep had Kamindu Mendis for 14, driven firmly to extra cover and caught one-handed by a full-length Shubman Gill in the 17th over.
The fifth wicket fell at 90. Sri Lanka went to lunch on 99 for 5, still 363 behind, and India had taken all five in a single session.
146 for the sixth wicket
What changed was the ball. It went soft, the surface flattened through the middle of the day, and the two batters left were the two least inclined to dig in.
Dickwella, back in a Test side he had not played for three years, swept almost everything and made 80 from 115 balls before Prasidh Krishna had him caught behind. It was his 23rd Test fifty. He still has no Test hundred, which is a record nobody wants: no batter in the format’s history has passed fifty more often without once converting.
Sonal Dinusha did convert. He made 100 from 168 balls, his first Test century, in a career that began against Bangladesh in June 2025. Jadeja got him shortly after he reached it, and Sri Lanka were all out for 284 in 79.4 overs. The sixth-wicket stand of 146 was more than half the innings.
Jadeja reaches 350
Jadeja took 3 for 57. The wicket of Nuwantha, who top-edged to Gill for 2, was his 350th in Tests, and with more than 4,000 Test runs behind him it made him the fourth all-rounder to do both, after Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and Daniel Vettori. Kapil is the only other Indian on that list. Jadeja got there in fewer matches than any of them, which we wrote about earlier this month when he was two wickets short.
Two days left, and the weather is in it
A lead of 178 is 22 short of the 200 India would have needed to enforce the follow-on, so a second innings was always coming. It did not start on Monday evening. Rain arrived, the covers went on, and the umpires called stumps with India yet to bat again.
That leaves two days to win a Test on a pitch that has taken 196 overs to yield 20 wickets, against a side that has just batted for a session and a half without losing one. India will want quick runs on the fourth morning and a target that leaves four sessions to bowl at. Galle in August tends to have an opinion about that sort of plan.