And by the end of day two itself, the Pallekele “green top” – that had bewildered even some of the past cricketers in the country who had played on actual green tops in the eighties and nineties — had become something similar to the usual Khettarama-type life-less “flat top”. Eight of 14 batsmen who batted in the first four days of the Test reached fifty or above and there were four centuries too. What a heck of a green top that is? The two most recognised curators that Sri Lanka had in the recent past were Anuruddha Polonowita and his understudy D.A.J. “Even though the top is green, the layers underneath appear though it has not been treated.

Source: The Nation April 25, 2021 05:48 UTC