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India steamrolled Sri Lanka to bring up their first win of the three-match series, notching up their joint biggest innings win in Test history, and their 11th over Sri Lanka at home.
A dejected Dinesh Chandimal spoke in the post-match ceremony about how the batting had let the team down.
" It was a good toss to win but we were outplayed from the first day. Our batting let us down again. When you're playing against India, you have to score 350+. Before we came here, we had a game-plan. We told the guys "if you get a start you have to go on".
Hopefully these youngsters will come back strong. [Angelo] Mathews is the senior-most guy in the batting line-up. He's not scoring, and the batting line-up has let us down. I'm sure he'll come back strong. We need to get positives out of this. When we're bowling, our body language was superb. We need to score more runs in the first innings. That's what we need to discuss as a unit. This wicket was good to bat on for the first three days. The bowling unit has also done a really good job.
But if you have no runs on the board, they can't do anything".
Virat Kohli, visibly relieved after a big win and his own fluent form with the bat, spoke about how the win was a team effort.
"The pitch was very good to bat on. It was on the slow side but there was nothing much happening. Just wanted to bat the way I wanted to - get into good positions and keep rotating strike. It's something I've wanted to better myself".
"For the pure reason that the team should benefit. When you lose concentration after hundred, you can lose two wickets quickly after that. It's important to buckle up after the hundred. My fitness also helped me to push harder. [Cheteshwar] Pujara, obviously he's been very consistent. [Murali] Vijay was playing after a while, he takes a lot of pride in playing Test cricket. He's a technically sound player".
"Rohit [Sharma] too, we believed in him. When we speak of combinations for the future, Rohit will definitely be in the fray. Ishant, Shami and Umesh haven't played so much recently. Playing first-class cricket has helped them. Ishant was outstanding. We have bowlers in good rhythm. We need them to play as much as possible. We would like to think that we want to prepare for that. That's why we asked for pitches that have a bit more life in it, bit of help for the fast bowlers. This one deteriorated pretty quickly. That is a big tour coming up. Everyone's looking forward to that".
Twitter was buzzing with messages for the Indian team after the game:
Ravichandran Ashwin
Harsha Bhogle
Bishen Singh Bedi
Rahul Sharma
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