Former Sri Lankan cricketer, Muttiah Muralitharan reckons that the Sri Lankan cricket team already have a few chances of winning a single Test against India in the upcoming three-match series that commences on Thursday in Kolkata. Sri Lanka has played 17 Tests in India but have not won a single game so far.

As per the reports in Cricbuzz, Muralitharan said, “Our chances of winning a Test match in India, I would say, are slim. All teams have struggled to compete in India. In the last 13 years, only two teams have won a series in India. They are ranked number one in the world at the moment, our Test cricket seems to be doing okay, but we are struggling in shorter formats of the game. This will be a tough series and the characters of our boys will be tested.”

Muralitharan asserted that when he toured India during his playing days in 1994 to 2009, he had to face world’s best batting line-up. He said, “When I played against India, they had the world’s best batting line-up. Their batting was stronger than now I would say. If you take that batting line-up, they had (Virender) Sehwag, (Gautam) Gambhir, (Rahul) Dravid, (Sachin) Tendulkar, (Sourav) Ganguly, (VVS) Laxman and (MS) Dhoni batting from one to seven. Some of them are all-time greats of the sport and it was a tough task for us.”

He further elaborated, “Similarly, we too were quite strong at home. Despite such a good side, India failed to win a series in Sri Lanka for some 22 years. We have some happy memories have made things tougher for them. It has been a superb rivalry and some closely contested games. That’s what the sport wants. There were some series where all games were drawn. In 1997, we played five Tests, two at home and three away and all games were drawn. Both teams had some quality batsmen.”