India heading for a humiliating defeat in Colombo Test

It's almost over. Indian batsmen continued their bad run for the sixth successive time in this test series. The much experienced Indian batting line up collapsed like a pack of cards before the disciplined Sri Lankan bowling attack. Even Sri Lankan lower order batsmen produced much better performance than the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly. At the end of third day's play, India has a lead of just 14 runs and have only 5 wickets remaining including that of Kumble, Harbhajan, Zaheer and Ishant Sharma.

Earlier, Sri Lanka took a crucial 147-run lead in the first innings, which turned out to be huge for the Indian batsmen to handle. Sehwag and Gambhir opened the innings in a style. Both batsmen added 62 for the first wicket. However, debutant fast bowler D Prasad yet again caused the damage by removing both Sehwag and Gambhir within a span of three runs. Once they were out, the result of the match was not difficult to guess.

Ganguly yet again faltered and scored only 18. Parthiv Patel was promoted up the order, but he made only 1. Sachin Tendulkar took the field despite the injury, but survived only 22 balls to score 14. Ajantha Mendis claimed Tendulkar's wicket, which has been his dream since the beginning of the series. India finished at 161/5 at stumps. Rahul Dravid remained unbeaten on 46, while Laxman was batting on 16. For Sri Lanka, Prasad and Mendis took 2 wickets each.

Ironically, both Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly failed to score even a half century in any of the six innings of the three-test match series. Laxman got one half century so far, while Dravid is fighting to complete his first 50 of the series. Now it's high time Indian selectors take some tough decisions and rebuild the Indian test team. We can't rely on Sehwag and Gambhir every time. We need to strengthen our middle order.