Gambhir impressed by rise in young players ahead of Sri Lanka Test

COLOMBO: India coach Gautam Gambhir said he was pleased with the rise in younger players ahead of the second Test against Sri Lanka on Sunday.

India hold a 1-0 lead in the two-match series and a victory in Colombo will help keep hopes of reaching the World Test Championship final alive.

Young batsman Devdutt Padikkal, playing his third Test, was one of the stars of India’s comprehensive 165-run win in Galle, scoring 167 and 44.

Spinner Manav Suthar, in his second appearance for India, claimed a match haul of 10 wickets.

“Extremely satisfying to see these younger players getting an opportunity and them delivering straight away,” Gambhir told reporters, but added that there is “still a lot of work to be done”.

“You can’t judge players by only one or two performances,” he said.

While India are ranked number one in ODIs and T20Is, their fortunes in Test cricket have been less impressive, having lost a home series to South Africa last year and another to New Zealand before that.

Gambhir said there is no cause for concern and that the team is going through a “transition in Tests”.

“I have believed that for the last one year we have done reasonably well,” he added.

The former India opener also made a case for three-match series, arguing that two-match contests leave little room for a team to recover from an early setback.

Sri Lanka skipper Dhananjaya de Silva said top-order batter Kamil Mishara was likely to make his Test debut in Colombo.

Mishara, a left-handed batsman who has already represented Sri Lanka in white-ball cricket, has been a prolific run-scorer in first-class cricket in recent seasons.

Sri Lanka, who suffered a 1-0 series defeat in the West Indies earlier in the year, are in dire need of a win to keep their World Test Championship campaign afloat.

“These are two evenly matched sides and we expect to put up a good performance in this Test,” de Silva said.