Christchurch, New Zealand: Trent Boult and Tim Southee took a wicket each before lunch on the third day of the first cricket test against Sri Lanka on Sunday to edge New Zealand closer to a win and 1-0 lead in the two-match series.
Southee dismissed opener Kaushal Silva on his overnight score of 33 in the first over of the day, ending his opening stand of 85 with Dimuth Karunaratne.
Karunaratne was 77 not out, Lahiru Thirmannae was 14 and Sri Lanka was 131-2 at lunch, still trailing New Zealand by 172 runs after following on.
Boult dismissed Kumar Sangakkara (1) for the second time in the match, again preventing the Sri Lanka veteran from reaching test 12,000 runs and leaving him seven runs short of 1,500 test runs in 2014.
Sangakkara started his 129th test with 11,988 runs — needing 12 more to become the fifth player in history to scored 12,000 runs in tests. He was out for six in the first innings and his failure in the second left that milestone still just out of reach.
Sangakkara will end 2014 with 1,493 runs in tests at an average of 71 and 132 runs short of 3,000 runs in all forms of the game in the calendar year, during which he has averaged 50.
He was undone on Sunday by a similar ball to the one that claimed his wicket in the first innings. Left-armer Boult was able to swing the ball away from the left-handed batsman. In the first innings, Sangakkara drove and was caught by Southee at third slip, and in the second Boult bowled a tighter line and he was caught by wicketkeeper B.J. Watling.
Karunaratne and Silva negotiated all of the final session on the second day, guiding Sri Lanka to 84-0 after it was dismissed for 138 in its first innings and forced to follow on 303 runs behind New Zealand.
Silva was out to the last ball of Southee's first over Sunday, playing just inside the line of a ball on off stump which took a faint outside edge and carried to Watling.
Karunaratne carried on, showing patience and excellent technique against the swinging ball. He reached his fifth test half century from 111 balls with six fours and, by lunch, was approaching his maiden test century.
Thirimanne survived a scare on 13 when he was adjudged lbw to off-spinner Mark Craig but used the Decision Review System to have the umpire's ruling overturned.
