While rain vied with the wicket for attention, the prize-winner of the day was an improbable new-ball bowler. Asked to specify your favourite contemporary new-ball bowler, Suranga Lakmal mightn’t be the name you’d think instantly, or even after emotions are recollected in time-consuming tranquility.

But India, the world’s No 1 team, couldn’t even take a run off him today as he helped himself to all the three wickets that fell as the first Test against Sri Lanka got going at the Eden Gardens. It exposed the hosts’ perennial vulnerability to pace and bounce on a green, lively wicket. That the action was spread over only 11.5 overs on the day of stop-and-start cricket might have gone a long way towards saving India’s blushes.

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“We knew we’d be getting this kind of a wicket here,” Sanjay Bangar, India’s batting tutor, told the customary end-of-the-day Press conference, adding: “Things were very much the same when we played a Test against New Zealand here in the recent past.” And Rumesh Ratnayake, Sri Lanka’s bowling guru, acutely aware of the implications inherent in a question about the day’s play not being stretched beyond where it had been stopped, under lights, restricted himself to saying: “Everything was in accordance with the relevant rules.”

But word was the Sri Lankans had been left utterly bewildered when, with India struggling grimly, the day’s play was called off after an appeal. Lakmal, who can swing the ball either way, struck with the first delivery of the Indian innings, inducing an outside edge from KL Rahul which Niroshan Dickwella held. After a morning lost to drizzle and Sri Lanka’s winning the toss, that wasn’t what the Eden Gardens wanted to see. But cricketing experiences often don’t match expectations. The other opener, Left-hander Shikhar Dhawan, dragged the ball onto his stumps with an inside edge soon after. Captain Virat Kohli was lbw, and that was plain as a pikestaff. India’s brief venture today, on being put in to bat, was sadly underwhelming. Hopes of runs were outweighed by apprehensions of failure during most of it. Cheteswar Pujara and vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane will be obliged to sally forth and take on Lakmal tomorrow, hopefully with greater efficiency than India managed today. Pujara’s story today was one of survival, taking more than 20 balls to score his first run and surviving chances along the way. Bangar said, given the sort of wicket he had found himself on, all that Lakmal had had to do was to bowl into the right areas. But that precisely was what had eluded Lahiru Gamage, Lakmal’s bowling partner. Ratnayake said he’d found his rhythm somewhat belatedly.

Though Pujara was dropped off him, he was wayward and unable to coax either pace or bounce from the track.  Bangar, though, seemed to be recalling a horror story. “For much of the time,” he said, “it was like playing a day-night Test with a red ball.” He had a point there. Commercial compulsions defy convention stupidly. Ratnayake said “the job” had only begun but India, who have gone in leaving Murali Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma and Kuldeep Yadav out, would let loose Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami and Bhubaneswar Kumar when the visitors would brandish the bat. Bangar didn’t say that. Neither did he endorse a suggestion that India were warming up for South Africa, though he stressed that “the team backed themselves” to deal with challanging situations. As of now, they confront one.