On this Day in 1997: August 2nd to August 6th, was a day when runs were flowing from all sides of the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This game witnessed many Records as the batsmen from both teams made full use of the batting-friendly pitch.
It was a joy for cricketing fans as people witnessed six centuries from both India and Sri Lanka batsmen.
After winning the toss Sachin opted to bat first, team India lost their opening batsmen early, but Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammad Azharuddin, and Navjot Singh Sidhu three of them stood tall and scored a century each helping India reach a total of 537.
Sachin was the highest run scorer among the Indian batsmen with 143 runs, followed by Azharuddin who scored 126 runs and Sidhu managed to score 111 runs.
In response, Sri Lanka came to bat and lost their first wicket in the form of Marvan Atapattu who was batting at 26, and from the second day of the test match, Jayasuriya smashed multiple records for three days. Jayasuriya made cricket look so simple with his elegant batting performance.
People witnessed a record-breaking partnership of 576 runs between Roshan Mahanama and Sanath Jayasuriya.
Jayasuriya scored his first and only triple hundred in the longest format of the game with 340 runs from 578 deliveries, whereas Mahanama scored 225 runs off 561 balls. Arvinda de Silva followed them by scoring a century making it the sixth century of the test match. In the end, Sri lanka ended up scoring 952/6.
This was one of the historical movements in the history of cricket and for both the India and Sri Lanka cricket board. Even though there was no winner in this match people enjoyed this match to the fullest with the tsunami of runs flowing in all directions. This match was also a nightmare for blowers as they got smashed all over the ground. Both Sri Lanka and Indian blowers struggled to stop the flow of runs but were unsuccessful.
The first test of the two-match series ended up being a draw. Though the test match was filled with individual performances Sanath Jayasuriya ended up stealing the show and was awarded the player of the match.
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