Sri Lanka 284 and 84 for 4 (de Silva 31*, Suthar 2-30, Siraj 1-11) need 288 runs to beat India 462 and 193 (Pant 66, Padikkal 44, Asitha 4-41)

The first of those wickets wasn’t the best delivery Asitha has bowled, getting Yashasvi Jaiswal on the cut, the seventh time Jaiswal has perished to that shot against pace. Since his debut, nobody has been dismissed when cutting fast bowlers as often as him.

Karnataka team-mates KL Rahul and Devdutt Padikkal added 65 breezy runs in a partnership that featured attractive runs, a hug and a blown kiss from Rahul to Padikkal for convincing him to review an lbw given on the field.

Rahul didn’t last too long after that reversal, and Sri Lanka put together testing periods of play either side of lunch, getting the wickets of Rahul, Padikkal, Shubman Gill and Dhruv Jurel in relative quick succession.

Those without a dog in the race might have expressed mild consternation that India kept batting once Pant got out with the lead at 352 especially because they were not able to score quick runs against testing bowling anyway, but it is difficult to go by the previous few days and risk declaring without absolutely batting the opposition out of the game.

By the time they were bowled out, India had a lead of 371 and four sessions to take ten wickets. A brief rain interruption only underlined the uncertainty that India would have had to deal with, but they still had two and three-quarters of an hour to make inroads.

And make inroads they did with the kind of collective performance captains love. It wasn’t just Suthar, it wasn’t just spin as bowlers from both ends kept asking questions. Ten of the first 20 overs were bowled by fast bowlers, and produced 2 for 20 out of a score of 41 for 3 at that time.

Siraj tried to repeat the first-innings dismissal of Nishan Madushka when he bowled the regulation outswinger, which nipped away and Madushka followed it. This time Madushka kept denying him until Siraj bounced him with the last ball of his fourth over. Madushka failed to keep the hook down.

Prasidh followed up Siraj’s spell with an impressive one of his own, which read 5-2-9-1 by the time he was done. While the wicket ball was one that bounced extra from short of a length, he was persistent with good lengths most of the time and drew reaction from the surface both laterally and up and down. Kusal Mendis was the man out trying to cut.

Gill kept giving even his spinners short and sharp spells, which almost worked when Jadeja repeated the first-innings dismissal of Dhananjaya de Silva with a catch to first slip, but it turned out he had overstepped.

A crouching gully worked for Suthar as Dhruv Jurel pulled off a low catch to send back Lahiru Udara, a catch that created debate, which was settled by, in the words of the third umpire, fingers underneath the ball. When bad light stopped play at 6.08pm, a total of 280 overs had been bowled in the Test. Going by average number of overs bowled per day, if India were to get 70 overs on the final day, there would be a burst of 24 overs with the second new ball.