Daijiworld Media Network

Colombo, Aug 20 : Can Team India leave the tough loss behind and bounce back in style? Talking ahead of the game, skipper Virat Kohli sounded very positive and said, 'We are not really concerned with any respective departments. The guys are in the right kind of mindset.' Kohli also hinted at Stuart Binny's selection, saying that his all-round abilities could be very handy to the side. 'He might not be express pace, but with the amount of swing he (Binny) has, he can really put the batsmen under pressure. We have that sort of variety when Stuart plays.'

India have won the toss and have opted to bat

Mathews: 'I would have actually bowled first. If at all there is anything in it for the bowlers, it will be in the first two sessions. It does swing and seam in the first session here. One forced change, Nuwan Pradeep is injured and Chameera is in. It will be an emotional Test, hopefully we'll win the Test match and give him (Sangakkara) a grand farewell.'

Kohli: 'We will bat first, looks like a pretty good surface. Whatever grass we saw two days back has disappeared. We lost two sessions in the entire game and lost the Test match in Galle. We need to learn from our mistakes, but we were positive for 80% of the game. We have a few changes here. Dhawan misses out due to injury, Vijay comes back. Binny and Umesh are in, Harbhajan and Aaron are out.'

Teams:

Sri Lanka (Playing XI): Dimuth Karunaratne, Kaushal Silva, Kumar Sangakkara, Lahiru Thirimanne, Angelo Mathews(c), Dinesh Chandimal(w), Jehan Mubarak, Dhammika Prasad, Rangana Herath, T Kaushal, Dushmantha Chameera

India (Playing XI): Murali Vijay, Lokesh Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli(c), Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha(w), Stuart Binny, Ravichandran Ashwin, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav

So if Binny is getting a game, who will miss out then? Will it be Harbhajan Singh, who had a poor outing in Galle? We'll get to know very shortly. There will certainly be one forced change though. After injuring his right hand while fielding at slip in the first Test, Shikhar Dhawan has been ruled out of the series with a fracture. So this means KL Rahul will open alongside Murali Vijay, who is expected to be fit for this encounter. Sri Lanka too have an injury concern in the form of Nuwan Pradeep and Dushmantha Chameera is expected to take his place.

Sri Lanka will be hoping to give their hero a grand farewell by winning the Test match and they certainly are in a good space to do that, especially after a sensational come-from-behind win in Galle. The manner in which they won the game will give them immense confidence. India were right on top for almost three days, but the hosts rode on Dinesh Chandimal's superlative hundred to gain a sizeable lead and then a heroic spell from Rangana Herath helped them stun the visitors.

In July 2000, Sangakkara made his international debut as a 23-year-old against a visiting Pakistani outfit in an ODI. A few days later, he opened his Test account against the Proteas after being picked as a wicket-keeper batsman for the first Test against South Africa in Galle. With time, he grew from strength to strength and eventually became one of the finest batsmen the game has ever produced. He has an appetite to score big runs, which is well explained by the fact that he is second - after Sir Don Bradman - on the list for most number of double hundreds scored in Test cricket having reached the landmark on 11 occasions. Can he add one more to his tally in his final Test appearance and join the Don?

At school, he was good at tennis, badminton and cricket, but thanks to the then principal of the Trinity College, Leonard de Alwis' advice, that Kumar Chokshanada Sangakkara took cricket seriously. After all these years, here he is as a cricketing legend and more importantly an inspirational figure of a country. This is one final chance for cricket lovers to see Sangakkara in action in international colours. Yes, you read that right. The left-handed batting star, who quit both the ODI and T20I formats earlier, will retire from the longest format too after this game, having played 134 Test matches and amassed over 12000 runs.