Live Cricket Score: Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, first Test at Galle

Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, first Test at Galle Live Cricket Score.
Sri Lanka dominated the day with the ball after New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat first in Galle. Only Brendan McCullum showed some character with the bat as Herath spun himself to another five wicket haul.
Catch live scores and ball-by-ball commentary of the second day's play between Sri Lanka and New Zealand here

Sri Lanka and New Zealand met each other on a sunny Saturday morning, to kick off the two match test series. Both teams, no doubt were looking forward to take an early lead in the series by shifting gears successfully from the shorter format to the classic version of cricket.

With the absence of the regular opening batsman T M Dilshan, Sri Lankan selectors used this as an opportunity to throw a young promising batsman in the name of Dimuth Karunarathne into the mix rather than persisting with the already tried out young batting duo, Thirimanne & Chandimal. Ross Taylor, who had a bad habit of losing the toss in the ODIs, won the toss today & unsurprisingly elected to bat on a Galle pitch which always suited for batting during first three days.

New Zealand, however didn’t manage to run away with the game, which was expected of them given the friendlier nature of the pitch. They were initially put under pressure by Shaminda Eranga who shared the new ball with Nuwan Kulasekara. He accounted for the initial two wickets of Marting Guptill & Williamson and Kulasekara later joined the party with the prize wicket of Ross Taylor who lost his off stump with an inside-edge.

Brendon McCullum & Flynn then resurrected the innings with a gritty little partnership of 90 and McCullum was the most succesfull batsman of the day with his 68 and Flynn too played his part with a half century. New Zealanders were going well at the half way stage of the day but Rangana Herath had other ideas. He first removed Brendon McCullum with a dream of delivery which clipped the off bail & then removed the next set batsman Flynn who was batting on 53. Herath who was the go-to man for Sri Lankan captains after the retirement of Murali, went on to add another 3 wickets to his tally and accounted for yet another fiver wicket haul, which he has developed as a habit recently. Faster men, Nuwan and Shaminda, ended the New-Zealand innings with two claiming one wicket each. Having won the toss and elected to bat, New Zealand ended up with a less than satisfactory score of 221.

Sri Lanka though, started horribly with the bat as the debut opener fell to an inswinger from Southee and adjudged LBW without scoring any run. With two more overs left for the day, Sri Lanka sent in their nightwatchman Suraj Randiv to co-op with the remaining overs.  Suraj Randiv survived a few nervous moments with the new ball as the Kiwis went hard at him. Sri Lanka ended the day with 9 runs on board for loss of the solitary wicket of the debutant Dimuth Karunarathne.

Sri Lanka would know that they will have to bat better and bat long for at least two days to completely put Kiwis out of this match. Galle pitch is known to misbehave towards the fourth & fifth days so Sri Lanka would like to see Kiwis bat during that period rather than themselves. New Zealanders will have a tough task ahead them especially given the fact that second day will assist batsmen more than the bowlers on Galle Pitch.

Scorecard: New Zealand 221 (Brendon McCullum 68, Flynn 53, Herath 5/65) vs Sri Lanka (S Randiv 3*, Southee 1/1)