India’s No. 3 at Galle: Padikkal should play, and not for the reason everyone says
Sai Sudharsan’s toe has left India choosing between Devdutt Padikkal and Sarfaraz Khan at first drop in Galle. The case for the left-hander is tactical, not temperamental.
Aug 13, 2026
India lost their No. 3 before this tour started. Sai Sudharsan, picked for the position, never got his toe right and never travelled, and the two men left arguing for the job could hardly be less alike. Sarfaraz Khan got the squad place. Devdutt Padikkal, on the evidence of the last fortnight, is likely to get the shirt. If it were my call, I would pick Padikkal too, and not for the reason most people are giving.
What the warm-up actually showed
Padikkal made 142 not out against a Sri Lanka Cricket XI in Colombo last week, off 164 balls with 18 fours, batting at three. Warm-up hundreds are cheap currency and this one came against a second-string attack, so the number matters less than the setting. He spent a long afternoon batting on a surface prepared to turn, against local spinners in local conditions, a week before the Test at Galle. That is the closest thing to a rehearsal anyone in this squad got.
His first-class record backs it up in a way his Test record cannot. Padikkal has more than 1,200 first-class runs at No. 3 at an average above 50, and most of his hundreds have come there. His Test career is two matches thin, 90 runs in all: 65 on debut at Dharamsala in March 2024, then a trip to Perth that November, and nothing since. He has not failed at this level so much as never been given the chance to.
The case for Sarfaraz, which is a real one
Sarfaraz Khan has 371 runs at 37.10 from six Tests, all of them in 2024, and one innings that still colours everything. His 150 at Bengaluru in October 2024 came in the second innings of the Test India had begun by being bowled out for 46, off 195 balls of properly aggressive batting, in a match where he had made a duck first time round. Three Indians have made a duck and a 150 in the same Test. He is one of them.
He also averaged above 53 in the Ranji Trophy last season after being dropped over fitness and fielding, which is the rare case of a player being told exactly what was wrong and going away and fixing it. Twenty-one months out of the side is a long punishment for a batter who had barely arrived.
AB de Villiers, talking on his YouTube channel this week, came down on the same side as the predicted XIs. “One question mark around that number three batting spot, with either Sarfaraz Khan or Devdutt Padikkal having to put up their hand for that spot. I’m leaning towards Padikkal, a left-hander, really solid technique.” He described his own preference as “more of a conservative option, a guy with more of a calmer demeanour who can just slow the game down and also be attacking, if need be.”
Why I would pick Padikkal, and it is not about safety
Here is where I part company with the popular argument. Padikkal is being sold as the low-risk pick, the calm option, the one who will not do anything silly. I do not think that is why he should play.
He should play because he is a left-hander, and because Galle in August is a ground where Sri Lanka will bowl offspin and left-arm spin in long, patient spells at a right-hand-heavy Indian top order. Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Sarfaraz: all right-handed. Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rishabh Pant give India two left-handers, and Ravindra Jadeja a third lower down. Putting a left-hander at three breaks up the sequence early, forces a captain to change his field and his angle in the first hour rather than the fortieth over, and makes life awkward for a finger spinner turning the ball into the pads all day. That is a tactical reason, not a temperamental one.
The counter-argument is honest enough: Sarfaraz plays spin as well as anyone in the squad, and India may want somebody who can take a session away from Sri Lanka rather than survive it. On a fifth-day Galle pitch that could matter more than handedness. I would still take the left-hander at three and keep Sarfaraz as the first change if a top order goes down, which, given how this squad’s fitness has gone this month, is not the remote possibility it sounds like.
Whoever gets it inherits a slot India have not settled since Cheteshwar Pujara stopped being the answer, and a series that matters more than a two-Test tour of Sri Lanka usually would. India sit fifth in the World Test Championship table, and winning both of these still only lifts them to the high fifties in percentage terms. The first Test starts at Galle on 15 August, at 10am India time. My guess is that the man who made the hundred gets to bat.