Skipper Dimuth Karunaratne carved a valiant 107, but like the brave captain aboard a sinking ship watched helplessly as the rest perished. Besides Karunaratne, only Kusal Mendis was among the runs scoring 54 as India came thumbs up in inflicting a defeat on Sri Lanka, this time by a margin of 238 runs in the second and final test in a 2-nil clean up at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore inside of three days.

Will as the captain holding anchor might have for another lion heart to war together with him the Indians, alas it was not to be having watched Mendis fall followed by the rest.

Indeed, Mendis’ exit was to trigger the disintergration. The Karunaratne-Mendis second wicket partneship had realised 97 runs, but not priceless enough to carry Sri Ldanka through in a contest that held out loads of time for Karunaratne’s men to make it, but could not last the distance. Only the skipper stood tall in grafting a characteristically calculated century off the Indian attack and the fourteenth in his career that has thrust him among the world’s top notch in the ICC rankings. It was as significant that Karunaratne, whose boundary studded 174-ball knock of crossing the ropes on 15 occasions also stamped the Lankan captain as the only batsman from the two sides to have reached the magical three figure milestone of the two exchanges. Therein, it was a truly remarkable achievement of having superseded the likes of India’s super star batsman Virat Kohli and incumbent captain Rohit Sharma.

It did mark a personal milestone of yet another worthy ton by Dimuth Karunaratne taken off India’s destructive attack highlighted by Ravichandran Ashwin’s returns of 4 for 55, Jasprit Bumrah 3 for 23 and Axar Patel 3 for 37. In that caving in none of the other Lankan batsmen with the exception of Niroshan Dickwella who made 12, reached double figures.