ON THIS DAY in 1997, Sri Lanka finished the final day of the 1st Test match at 952-6, in response to India’s 537 all out.
It remains the highest team score in a Test innings. Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama scored 340 and 225 respectively and batted throughout the 3rd and 4th day.
In this run-scoring spree, a young 20-year-old Mahela Jayawardana Smade his Test debut.
His turn came late on the fifth afternoon. He grabbed the opportunity with both hands to make a 66 in 105 balls at 6. In a recent Interview with NewsWire Mahela Jayawardana was questioned on why Sri Lanka didn’t go for the historic 1000 runs mark as there was nearly 1 hour left in the game, when Sri Lanka declared.
“Initially, when we were scoring runs in bulk, we were thinking about going for the 1000-run mark, by the time of the tea break. We had about 1 hour left to play when we declared our innings. But we decided against it, as there were a lot of criticism for not putting the Indian team to bat for a long time. Even if we recorded 1000, there was no way that the RPS scoreboard could’ve recorded it, because it wasn’t and still isn’t a digital scoreboard”, Mahela said in reply, recollecting fond memories.
When NewsWire asked whether the thought of keeping the Indians on the field for too long being unethical played any part in declaring without going for the 1000-run mark, Mahela agreed, saying that the pitch for that match was as flat as the current southern highway and they could have gone on and on with scoring, but perhaps it was the sporting ethics which stopped them.