Karunaratne's lone march leaves SL with deja vu

Many teams will allow one languid left-hander with acute allergies outside off stump, into the team. However, with Upul Tharanga, Lahiru Thirimanne and Jehan Mubarak all in the side, Sri Lanka seem to have had an HR malfunction and hired everyone in the country that fit this description. All day long the lefties took turns thrilling and frustrating, smoking fours through the ring, then poking jerkily at the ball. When the day wound to a close, the hosts were on the brink of an underwhelming total. They would have been far worse off had Dimuth Karunaratne not set himself apart.

Tharanga has 14 international tons and a gallery of offside drives. Thirimanne has the vice-captaincy, and with it, the knowledge that selectors will hesitate to drop him. Mubarak has years of domestic experience. Karunaratne, with none of these, has now made the highest score of the series. Knowing they can't immediately replace Kumar Sangakkara's runs, Sri Lanka seem to have flooded this batting order with men who can at least emulate his style. On Friday, Karunaratne was alone in engaging the patience and self-denial that was so often the bedrock of a Sangakkara innings.

On a pitch with little live grass, Karunaratne's approach in the first session contrasted sharply with Tharanga's. Recalled after nearly a year out of the Test side, Tharanga played as he always does, veering wildly between the sorry and the sublime. Early in his innings, he made suicidal wafts at balls he did not need to play. Then after a few minutes of looking like he barely knew which end of the bat to hold, he struck Rahat Ali for an off-drive so sweet, it deserves to be danced to at weddings.

Even the transcendental Tharanga knocks contain the early ugly moments. On Friday, when these ungainly stretches were followed by perfectly struck boundaries, Tharanga was like a drunk tumbling down a flight of stairs, only to stick the perfect somersault landing at the bottom.

Karunaratne had once also been the kind of batsman who waved his bat like a sword, before falling on it while the ball was still new. But after two-and-a-half years near the top level, he has taken stock of his shortcomings and built purpose into his play. In the first hour, Karunaratne's only boundaries came from thick edges that bounced well short of fielders, and one drive hit down the ground. Karunaratne has said his relative success in second innings came down to the pursuit of a tangible goal. He didn't lack for focus in this innings.

"When I went into bat, I saw that it wasn't an easy wicket," Karunaratne said. "It was seaming around a bit. What I really wanted to do was bat out the first session. I didn't think of anything else. I barely even looked at the scoreboard. When the ball was moving around, I was really selective, and thought to hit only down the ground. That worked for me. I think I can be successful when I have a target like that in my head."

When Yasir Shah came on, only Karunaratne avoided the spiral into the legspinner's vortex. Yasir was so accurate, and Misbah-ul-Haq's field so precise, Pakistan effectively laid siege to Sri Lanka's middle order, and awaited the desperate move. Tharanga had scored only 10 from 30 Yasir deliveries, before driving at a ball that caught his edge. Thirimanne had five from 18 off Yasir, before he ran at the bowler and lifted him to mid off. Normally impervious to dot-ball pressure, even Angelo Mathews lost his wicket after a lull. His failed attempt to clear mid on followed four dot balls from the five deliveries Yasir had sent him. Mubarak lasted a little longer, but was dismissed charging as well.

While his team-mates knocked themselves unconscious on walls Yasir had set up all series, Karunaratne was flitting around the crease, making incisions through a tight leg side, and backing away to find runs outside off. Of Sri Lanka's top six, he was alone in striking Yasir at over 35 per cent, scoring 45 from the 79 balls Yasir delivered to him.

"Using your feet is the key," Karunaratne said. "When you do that, you can rotate the strike, and that was the main thing I did against Yasir."

In the end, it was another legspinner that dismissed Karunaratne. He failed to read Azhar Ali's floating paper bag of a googly, and perished to expose the tail. At the close, perhaps he understood a feeling all too familiar to Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene: that of having hit big runs, while your team somehow still heads towards an average total.

At the beginning of this series, Karunaratne was one of many left-handers in the squad yet to truly nail down their position at the top level. With two fifties and a fine hundred now, he has broken away from the pack.