Coming into day-three with 98 for 2 on the board, the Englishmen narrowed the gap much to the Lankans dismay ending the day on 339 for 9.
The visiting skipper, who is in tremendous form, struck a magnificent 186 runs. Root batted through the day better than any other batsman has done so far in this series. Not even the locals. He swept as if he was batting in his backyard and kept using his feet well to put off the settled bowling unit of Sri Lanka who took the other batsmen by their collars.
Johnny Bairstow was the first to fall on day-three as he was outplayed by the Sri Lankan spin spearhead, Lasith Embuldeniya. Bairstow was soon followed by the next man in, Dan Lawrence, who had no clue whatsoever on how to tackle the rigorous spin from Embuldeniya. The young left-arm spinner dropped one in front of Lawrence’s eye line and turned it away sharply off the surface for which the batter had no option but to stick his bat out. It got his edge and flew to Lahiru Thirimanne at first slip.
Being known for his busy batting, Jos Buttler kept rolling his way as he partnered with his skipper to steady England’s ship with a 97-run stand for the fifth wicket. Buttler lived by the reverse sweep and also perished by the same. He made 55 runs off 95 deliveries with 7 boundaries in it.
Sam Curran, Dom Bess and Mark Wood tried to get through to stumps but the Thirimanne-Embuldeniya combination stood in their way. All three of them were beaten by the turn and ended up in the slips. Dom Bess was the toughest of the 3 as he kept a dead bat in front of him for 95 deliveries scoring 32 runs. He was involved in a very important partnership worth 81 runs for the seventh wicket with Root.
In the bowling front, Sri Lanka seems to have found a gem in Lasith Embuldeniya who made his 9th Test look like the 90th. He had excellent control over the ball and bowled from angles that flustered the batters and left them clueless. He returned figures of 7 for 132 while Ramesh Mendis picked up a wicket and the other turned out to be a runout.
England is now 42 runs behind Sri Lanka’s first-innings score and this Test match looks to get exciting in the days to come.
