With the pitch showing no signs of aiding the bowlers, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is pinning his hopes on the second new ball to give India breakthroughs on the fourth day of the second Test against Sri lanka.
"I think this wicket will get slower and slower. It is not going to be easy work tomorrow for sure. We will have to be really disciplined. I thought we gave a few runs more than ideally we should have given today. Tomorrow we can probably try and squeeze them out and try and nip a few wickets up early," said Ashwin at the press conference.
"Wicket is slowing down at a very quick pace. Edges aren't carrying. So that means we will have to stick our guns out and try to prise a few wickets out.
"The second new ball, therefore, becomes important. But as I said they got a great partnership but the guys coming in will have to start from scratch. There is going to be an equal challenge on both sides," he added.
Praising Karunaratne and Mendis, Ashwin said the two batted beautifully.
"I just think Test teams are allowed to bat well in a few sessions. They did bat well. We beat the bat pretty often even in the sessions we didn't get wickets. I thought they batted really well.
"Karunaratne really complimented Mendis, defended beautifully, and Mendis played a few extra shots that Karunaratne obviously didn't play. It came off for them. Credit to them, they batted really, really well," he said.
The spinner, however, felt that the Indian bowlers did not do "too much wrong".
"We tried reverse swing and bowled cutters in the end. Hardik Pandya got the wicket with a cutter. We beat the bat a few times more than we should have for the nicks we got. Hopefully we will try and nick them off tomorrow."
Ashwin added that as the ball got older it fizzled out.
"It had a bit of venom in the morning, in the first session. As the ball got older and we bowled the second time around, it was kind of fizzling out and the edges weren't carrying that much to the fielders. We beat the bat a lot. I thought Mendis batted beautifully. He put Jadeja off his length very quickly. He kept on sweeping him, and he was lucky, he got away with it, but credit to him.
Ashwin defended the team's decision to enforce the follow- on, saying, "Most often than not we have based it (follow-on decision) on how fresh or how tired the bowlers are. We did get them out in under two sessions so we thought it was the right time to enforce the follow-on.