GALLE – Nkrumah Bon­ner is hold­ing out hope of West In­dies sav­ing the open­ing Test against Sri Lan­ka, de­spite the pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion in which the tour­ing side find them­selves ahead of Thurs­day’s fi­nal day.

West In­dies re­sume on 52 for six in their sec­ond in­nings in pur­suit of an im­prob­a­ble vic­to­ry tar­get of 348 at Galle In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Sri Lan­ka, af­ter con­ced­ing a first in­nings lead of 156 on Wednes­day’s penul­ti­mate day.

“We have [about 90 overs] to bat to­mor­row (Thurs­day) and if me and Josh (Joshua Da Sil­va) can bat the ma­jor­i­ty of that, [West In­dies can save the game],” said Nkrumah Bon­ner, un­beat­en on 18 at the close and part­nered by wick­et­keep­er Joshua Da Sil­va on 15.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we want to play each ball on its mer­it, re­spect the bowlers and put away the bad balls. It’s a sim­ple plan to­mor­row, just to bat time and score as much runs as pos­si­ble.”

West In­dies flirt­ed with their low­est-ever Test to­tal when they were re­duced to 18 for six af­ter tea as off-spin­ner Ramesh Mendis (4-17) and left-arm spin­ner La­sith Em­buldeniya (2-18) ripped apart the in­nings with the new ball.

Bon­ner, how­ev­er, along with Da Sil­va com­bined to add 34 for the sev­enth wick­et to help West In­dies avoid that in­dig­ni­ty, while al­so keep­ing their side’s slim hopes alive of sav­ing the en­counter.

And while the odds will be firm­ly stacked against the Caribbean side, Bon­ner said there was still great be­lief in the camp.

“[The mood] is the best I’ve seen since I’ve been play­ing for West In­dies so ob­vi­ous­ly that is up,” the Ja­maican ex­plained.

“So the en­er­gy is right and to­mor­row hope­ful­ly we can come and do the job.”

West In­dies were bowled out in their first in­nings at the start of the day for 230 af­ter re­sum­ing on 224 for nine, and then watched as Sri Lan­ka quick­ly gath­ered 191 for four, be­fore de­clar­ing on the stroke of tea.

Cap­tain Dimuth Karunaratne top-scored with 83 while for­mer skip­per An­ge­lo Math­ews belt­ed an un­beat­en 69, as West In­dies strug­gled to lim­it the scor­ing.

West In­dies have chased the game ever since los­ing the toss and watch­ing Sri Lan­ka pile up 386, and then slump­ing to 113 for six in re­ply at the end of the sec­ond day.

And Bon­ner be­lieves the home con­di­tions had nat­u­ral­ly pro­vid­ed Sri Lan­ka with an edge.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly they would have played here all their ca­reers so they know what’s hap­pen­ing. They know how to ap­proach it (pitch) – how to bowl on it and how to bat on,” he point­ed out.

“We’ve come here for a few weeks. This is my first time in Sri Lan­ka so ba­si­cal­ly I had to make an ad­just­ment and I’m sure most of the play­ers will have to do too.”

West In­dies are yet to win a sin­gle Test in Sri Lan­ka in nine pre­vi­ous at­tempts.

CMC