Close - India 56 for 1 (S Ramesh 16*, R Dravid 11*) and need a further 208 to win
India ended day three relatively happy on 55 for 1, chasing 264, but they will sleep with their past haunting them. They have thrice hunted down medium-sized targets in the last 10 months (190 v Zimbabwe at Delhi, 155 v Australia at Chennai and 184 v Zimbabwe at Bulawayo), but the last time they won chasing over 200 was, get this: the world record 403 at Port of Spain quarter of a century ago. The closest they came in between was the Tied Test II at Madras against Australia, when they scored 347. Sourav Ganguly did all he could: shaved his moustache, stuffed Zaheer Khan with fire at breakfast, spiked Venkatesh Prasad's lunch with extra-outswing tablets, even helped the groundstaff haul the canvas to protect the pitch from a torrential downpour, but he could not find any method to combat Muttiah Muralitharan's swinging bat. And his 67 may still make the difference in the series. Coming in at 140 for 7, Murali not only bludgeoned runs with enormous heaves and comical swipes, he also used common sense to farm the strike brilliantly with Ruchira Perera for a 64-run last-wicket partnership. He hit softly enough to run two to the men in the deep, and hard enough to hit it past (and three times over) them. It was a good half an hour after tea before Ruchira Perera faced the first ball of an over. Murali brought up his maiden Test fifty that same over and acknowledged his home crowd (twice) with both arms raised and a smile broad enough to swallow the ground. Yet it was a day when India waltzed away with most of the honours - Sri Lanka slid from 52 for 1 to 157 for 9. Maintaining the symmetry of yesterday, Zaheer took a wicket (Kumara Sangakkara) with only his third ball and removed Mahela Jayawardene and Russel Arnold before lunch. Prasad knocked back Marvan Atapattu (45) with a peach of an outswinger and then raced to his seventh five-wicket haul in Tests after lunch, his control and swerve in the air too good for the lower order. India knocked up 55 runs that were both useful and well-earned, because Chaminda Vaas bowled even better than in the first innings. You could almost hear the seam whirring through the air as every ball curved back to land on and about the right-hander's off stump. In his second over, Vaas nearly had Shiv Sunder Das three times - two consecutive shouts for leg before were turned down and he hit the stumps with a no-ball. To add insult to injury, it flew away to the boundary for a five. Das was eventually bowled for 19, playing inside the line of Murali's straighter one. It was almost quarter to six, but Sourav Ganguly bravely sent in Rahul Dravid instead of a night watchman. Each session has told a different story in the last three days, tomorrow should be no different.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden Online in India.

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