Around 4:58 PM on Tuesday, as thick dark clouds settled over the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo, the umpires chatted, the batters hydrated and Shubman Gill reluctantly changed plans. He had a shiny new ball in hand, used for just 2.4 overs, but couldn't summon Prasidh Krishna, his most trusted quick of the day. It was too dark for pace. Instead, Ravindra Jadeja walked in from the deep.

He bowled only three balls before rain and bad light brought a swift end. The players had to rush off the field as the downpour arrived. There was no chance to slowly amble away, processing the day's play, letting overworked muscles relax and exchanging high-fives with different undertones depending on how the day had gone.

The two teams had exited the park at stumps in similar yet different ways a day earlier. The dramatically gloomy overheads had caused that early finish too, but Sri Lanka were the ones left shaken, having lost a couple of wickets after India's declaration. 1/1. 8/2. Stumps, and a new ball in India's hands to take a swipe at the rest of the Sri Lankan line-up on Day 3.

But cricket chucked out the all-too-familiar Day 3 script it had been handed and winged it. By the end, when tired Indian bowlers, many of them new to this format, trudged back to the dressing room, Morne Morkel's message was concise and came from years of experience: Welcome to a proper day of Test cricket.

This wasn't the first time in this short series that Sri Lanka pushed back with the bat. Young and relatively inexperienced as they may be, this Indian bowling attack has watched this movie before: batting defiance stretched across sessions. Previously, they waited, and waited, and waited some more, channelling all the bowling discipline they could before eventually cracking through. In Colombo, the means haven't produced the same result...yet.

It was a busy day for Shubman Gill, the bowling captain. This series has taught him a lot about Prasidh Krishna. Wayward in England, pointed in Sri Lanka, he has outbowled Mohammed Siraj in Galle and Colombo so far, with the excess bounce on both surfaces tipping the scales marginally in favour of the tall Karnataka pacer. Prasidh has reciprocated that trust with an impressive display of building pressure and prising out key wickets.

Prasidh got India started in the dying moments of Day 2 with Lahiru Udara's wicket, and then again at the start of Day 3 with the scalp of Kamil Mishara, getting the ball rolling on both occasions. Gill also had a classical off-spinner to operate with in the absence of Kuldeep Yadav. Saransh Jain had a false start to his Test career with a no-ball and took some time to truly find his rhythm.

Once he did, he was frugal for the rest of the day but a maiden Test wicket eluded him. He came close, when an LBW appeal went his way in his second last over of the day, but got overturned on review. As he walked off, Manav Suthar, a spinner who debuted not too long ago, offered a couple of consolatory pats. He knew how big an occasion this was supposed to be.

Gill gave Saransh a six-over spell with a change of ends in the morning session, but as the day progressed, he preferred falling back on Manav Suthar and Ravindra Jadeja for longer stretches. All three bowled a similar number of overs, but Saransh almost operated on a shorter leash. The 33-year-old debutant perhaps doesn't pass the eye test with his simplistic approach to the crease and front-on action, which makes his bowling look almost devoid of effort. But that wasn't the case. Saransh offered variety with an average speed much slower than Jadeja and Suthar, and also got the ball to drift and turn well enough to challenge both edges of the bat.

Cricket in the subcontinent has seen plenty of days like these, where time dictates habits. A sweep shot becomes an escape route from the simmering pressure of spin that eventually comes at them from both ends. And one sweep shot too many carries their name on it.

But the diminutive and compact Sonal Dinusha didn't walk with the trend. He swept, reverse-swept and slog-swept without giving the Indian bowlers a whiff. That's been his style in both fixtures: 106 of his 269 runs in the series have come from this shot type. If he gets 55 more, which looks highly likely, Dinusha will own the record for most runs scored from the sweep against spin in a Test series since 2007. At the other end, Pasindu Sooriyabandara, a bundle of nervous energy in the second innings in Galle, was all poise and conviction in Colombo. His 133-ball 80 came with a staggering control percentage of 93.3.

As the day wore on, Gill got busier: more mid-over chats with his bowlers, more tiny adjustments to the position of his deep fielders, more proactive changes in search of breakthroughs. His bowlers tried different angles and Sarfaraz Khan as the designated close-in fielder attempted banter to distract, without much success.In Galle, India kept punching at the wall and eventually made a dent: both Sri Lankan innings there had a partnership lasting 200-plus balls, but it counted for nothing in the end.

In Colombo, they've put together a few stands almost like those: 123 balls, 137 balls, and 92 balls and counting. India often broke through, even off innocuous deliveries, but Sri Lanka found a way to stand back up and resume their fight.

It wasn't that India let the game slip away. They still picked six wickets, kept Sri Lanka to a scoring rate of 3.18 in an 80-over day, and the prospect of enforcing the follow-on remains within reach. Their grouse, perhaps, could be that the game moved but not enough for them to truly get their hands on the wheel, with the threat of rain now bringing another layer of uncertainty. As they unwind into the night, they'll know exactly what Morkel meant. It was a proper day of Test cricket, where scripts occasionally get ripped apart.

Stats inputs from Roshan Gede