Cricket is all topsy turvy.
The effect in India's first innings sort of conveys what I was thinking about in the last Test. Whether batsmen understand Mendis is going to be at times secondary to how hard it is for lower orders to deal with this sort of attack. Although the middle order struggled, with a batsman getting a huge score, in good batting conditions you tend to count on the tail to give support and get close to 400 (which still seems like it would be at the lower end of the scale for all the runs that batsmen have been thumping). With Kumble, Harbhajan, Khan and Sharma, India have a pretty good tail for supporting an attacking batsman, so the kicker is that this sort of bowling attack pulls the rug from under those players. Now Sri Lanka also have a sturdy tail, so if they do collapse in the middle order, they might be able to count on them to make much more runs than India and if they don't collapse, they could repeat what they got in the first Test.
