Dhananjaya de Silva and Kusal Mendis spent most of Wednesday, 11 November, changing the terms of the first Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan. They came together at 155 for four in Rawalpindi, with Sri Lanka still 279 runs behind in the first innings. By the time fading light brought play to a close, they had added 249 without being separated. De Silva was unbeaten on 167, Mendis on 117, and Sri Lanka stood at 404 for four, just 30 behind Pakistan’s declared 434 for nine. The former Sri Lanka captain and the man who succeeded him had turned a substantial deficit into a contest over which side would take a first-innings lead.

The two centuries arrived at different points in the day and told different stories. De Silva resumed on 22 and helped Sri Lanka negotiate the morning with Kamindu Mendis before building the larger partnership. Kusal Mendis arrived after the only wicket of the day and reached his hundred in the final session. It was his 11th Test hundred and his first match as Test captain. AFP reported that no Sri Lankan before him had scored a century on debut as Test captain. Together, the pair also surpassed a partnership mark that had stood since the teams met in Lahore in 2009.

Why the morning mattered

Sri Lanka began the day on 114 for three. Their innings had already gone through two distinct phases on Tuesday. Pakistan’s seamers reduced them to 12 for two, with Mohammad Abbas removing Pasindu Sooriyabandara for no runs and debutant Saqib Khan dismissing Dinesh Chandimal for one. Lahiru Udara then made 42 from 52 balls before Saqib took his second wicket at 65 for three. That start gave Pakistan a chance to turn their large first innings into a lead while the visiting side still had several specialist batters to come. Every additional stand made that opening harder to exploit.

Kamindu and De Silva put on 90 for the fourth wicket across the two days. Abbas broke the stand on Wednesday when Kamindu edged to wicketkeeper Muhammad Ghazi Ghori for 58 from 131 balls. The score was 155 for four. Although Kamindu was gone before the biggest partnership began, the innings he and De Silva built is part of the explanation for what followed. They took Sri Lanka past the early losses and forced Pakistan to bowl into the 42nd over before Kusal arrived. He entered against a ball that had already been in use for a substantial part of the innings, with the option of a second new ball still some way off.

Pakistan also had an opening before Kamindu’s dismissal. With De Silva on 38, Razaullah drew an outside edge that Saud Shakeel put down at first slip. A catch there would have removed the batter who ultimately faced 241 deliveries and stayed to the close. It is impossible to assign the runs that followed to one missed catch alone. Sri Lanka still had to build both partnerships and handle the changes of pace, spin and ball. But the contrast with Abbas’s breakthrough is instructive. When an edge carried cleanly to Ghori, Pakistan removed a set batter. When the slip chance went down, De Silva had a chance to start again.

The captaincy transition gave the partnership an unusual backdrop. The ICC’s October announcement listed 75 Tests and 4,836 runs for Kusal at the time of his appointment. He had already made ten Test hundreds, and he also had a century against Pakistan in a different format, at the 2023 men’s World Cup. Wednesday put that experience to work in a first Test as captain while his predecessor played alongside him. De Silva’s 167 was his 14th Test hundred and his fourth against Pakistan, according to AFP. The succession had changed which player made decisions for the team in the field, while leaving both available to deal with the same problem at the crease.

How the pair built 249

De Silva made his hundred from 151 balls, reaching it with a boundary off left-arm spinner Arafat Minhas in the second session. He hit 20 fours in all. Kusal reached his hundred from 152 balls and finished the day having faced 188, with 10 fours and four sixes. The difference in their boundary patterns helps explain how the stand accumulated runs without relying on one scoring method. De Silva collected 80 of his runs in fours. Kusal added the capacity to clear the field, including two straight sixes off Minhas, then used a ramp over the wicketkeeper against Razaullah to reach his century.

They also batted through Pakistan’s use of the second new ball. Its arrival offered the home attack a different set of options after long spells with the older one. Pakistan tried a review in the 90th over after Razaullah hit De Silva on the pads, but ball tracking showed the delivery going over the stumps, leaving the on-field decision in place. In the 92nd over Kusal reached three figures. The sequence mattered because an innings can change when the second new ball is available and the fielding side can reconsider its approach. By the close, both batters were still there and Sri Lanka had completed 102 overs.

The bowling figures show how different Abbas’s day was from those of the other main bowlers. He had two for 64 from 29 overs at the close, and Saqib had two for 105 from 26. Minhas and Razaullah had yet to take a wicket. Figures at the end of a day cannot settle what each bowler should have done on a particular delivery. They do show that Pakistan needed a second means of breaking the stand after Abbas removed Kamindu. Once the two batters had spent time together, changing ends or introducing a fresh ball did not produce another dismissal.

The innings Pakistan had put on the board

The depth of Pakistan’s own scoring is what made Sri Lanka’s recovery necessary. The home side declared at 434 for nine in 106.3 overs on Tuesday. Saud Shakeel led the scoring with 93 from 199 balls and shared a 96-run sixth-wicket stand with Ghori, who made 48. Pakistan had five half-centurions. Tayyab Arif scored 57, Mohammad Taha 51, Babar Azam 50 and Minhas 52 alongside Shakeel’s 93. Dilshan Madushanka and Asitha Fernando took three wickets each for Sri Lanka. Their work kept Pakistan from extending its first innings indefinitely, even as runs continued to come from several places in the order.

The shape of the two totals was strikingly different. Pakistan spread the scoring among batters in several roles and used most of its wickets. Sri Lanka reached almost the same score with six wickets still available, but more than three-fifths of its runs had come from a single partnership. That makes the first part of Thursday’s play important for both sides. If Pakistan separate the pair early, they can make the remaining Sri Lankan batters face the demands of the innings from a standing start. If the partnership continues, Sri Lanka can close the deficit while still choosing how much time to devote to building a lead.

Sri Lanka had won the toss and elected to field. By the time Pakistan declared, that choice had left the tourists with a demanding total to answer, but also with their full innings still available. At stumps on day three they had batted 102 overs, just short of the length of Pakistan’s innings. The two totals, therefore, took roughly the same amount of time to build in terms of deliveries. Their remaining resources were very different. Pakistan had already closed its innings with one wicket standing. Sri Lanka was still batting with six wickets in hand and two players established at the crease.

A record with history on both sides

The previous Sri Lankan fifth-wicket record against Pakistan was 207, set by Thilan Samaraweera and Tillakaratne Dilshan in Lahore in 2009. The new mark stood 42 runs higher by Wednesday evening, with the stand still in progress. This is a record for the fifth wicket in this particular matchup. Its significance is the distance the two batters covered from the loss of the fourth wicket to the end of play, as well as its place in a series between teams that have met often in the format.

Rawalpindi itself offers a comparison that is closer to De Silva’s career. In December 2019, the same opponents played the first Test staged in Pakistan in more than a decade. Rain and poor light limited that match to 167 overs over five days, and it ended in a draw. De Silva made a century before Sri Lanka declared at 308 for six. Abid Ali and Babar Azam then made hundreds for Pakistan. Seven years later, De Silva and Babar were both involved again, but their roles had changed. Babar led Pakistan on Wednesday while De Silva had handed over Sri Lanka’s Test captaincy to the partner at the other end.

Two Tests at one ground

The teams now have a second reason to study what the ground offers. The Pakistan Cricket Board has moved the second Test from Lahore to Rawalpindi, keeping the scheduled dates of 17–21 November. The board cited prevailing weather conditions. Reuters, the Associated Press and Dawn reported that worsening smog in Lahore drove the relocation. That decision concerns the venue of next week’s match. Wednesday’s early finish in the first Test was attributed to fading light in Rawalpindi. The two developments affect the time or place available for play in different ways.

Both matches are part of the ICC World Test Championship. In the 2025–27 cycle, a win carries 12 points, a tie six and a draw four, with the standings ranked by the percentage of available points earned. A first-innings lead carries no separate championship points. Its value is the position it gives a team for the rest of the Test. A larger cushion may force an opponent to bat longer before it can set a target, but the side building that cushion uses some of the match time it might otherwise have available to take wickets. Wednesday’s shortened day made that time a practical consideration.

The first Test is scheduled through Friday, 13 November. As Thursday begins, Pakistan still owns a lead on the scorecard and needs six wickets to dismiss Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has two batters on centuries and needs 31 runs to go ahead. Each of those facts matters more to the next session than a prediction about the result. The first task for Pakistan is to separate the pair. For Sri Lanka it is to convert a day of recovery into the first-innings position that seemed distant when Kusal walked out at 155 for four.

Sources and photograph

Pakistan Cricket Board day-three report · Cricbuzz scorecard · Associated Press via Medicine Hat News · AFP via Dawn · ICC captaincy announcement · ICC on the 2019 Rawalpindi Test · PCB 2019 match report · PCB venue announcement · Reuters on the relocation · Associated Press on the relocation · Dawn on the relocation · ICC championship points system.

Archive photograph of Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium during the Pakistan Super League in March 2020. Neweditorpk via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, original image.

Talal Osman