Sri Lanka vs India 2017: 2nd Test day 3, 5 talking points

#2 Sri Lankan openers continue to swish at thin air

Umesh Yadav cleaned up Tharanga in the third over of the second innings

Sri Lankan openers just can't seem to get things right against the Indians. While Upul Tharanga and Dimuth Karunaratne have altered between playing horrendous shots in this series, there has been the odd defiance, stroke-filled innings from either of them. But they aren't able to string together anything substantial and the middle-order has often been exposed way too early in the innings.

To put things into perspective, Lanka's last few opening stands against India read:

15, 32, 15, 0, 1, 8, 11, 1, 7, 22, 0, 7

Those are dismal numbers that give away Lanka's inability to fight and put up a decent opening stand. In fact, the last time Sri Lankan openers strung together a 100+ stand was in October 2016 against Zimbabwe in Harare. There has been only one other century stand by their openers since January 2015, a shocking stat that reveals Sri Lanka's plight at the moment.