Sri Lankan off-spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan, was the star of the show at the end of day three of the second Test at the Asgiriya International Stadium, Kandy, after his batting put his side in a strong position in the Test.

He usually excels with the ball or in the field, but this time surprisingly it was with the bat. At the end of the day's play, Muralitharan, who made an entertaining 67 runs in 64 balls, declared, "This is my best innings by far."

With side struggling on 157 for nine, Muralitharan and Ruchira Perera put up a crucial 64-run partnership for the last wicket, Sri Lanka's best partnership for the last wicket against India. Speaking about the partnership the Tamil speaking off-spin bowler said, "Nothing was going on in my mind. I was taking my chances and just hitting the ball and the runs kept coming. So I thought that I will keep going in that way and at the end we got a good partnership."

That last wicket partnership helped Sri Lanka set India a victory target of 264 and Murali himself feels it's a good one, "I feel that is a winning total."

Ruchira Perera though made only six runs gave Murali marvelous support from the other end by staying in the middle for 76 long minutes, "Ruchira gave a marvelous support. It can turn out to be a crucial partnership at the end of the match. If not for his support we' wouldn't have gone past the 200 mark."

When CricInfo asked him about the improvement he has made in his batting, he modestly said, "I don't think there's any improvement at all."

He further said, " I don't bat at the nets at all. So there's no improvement whatsoever. But it's just that I can play some shots. I just attack rather than defend and the runs flow."

Murali ended the day on a high note claiming the only Indian wicket to fall. The bowler who's playing at his home venue, Kandy, while speaking about his home ground wicket said, "It's seaming a bit and provides some assistance for the fast bowlers, but not a bad wicket at all. We got to keep things tight on Saturday."

" Definitely it would have been good if we had got a couple of more wickets, but at the end I think one wicket was good enough."

When asked whether this is the first of many Test fifties, the 29-year-old Murali said, "Don't know. I can't predict myself at the middle."

© CricInfo