Pathum Nissanka and Niroshan Dickwella helped Sri Lanka gain ascendancy on the fourth morning of the Test series opener, stretching the team's lead to 257 by Lunch with five wickets still intact. The visitors lost an early wicket of Dhananjaya de Silva, but barring that the session was all theirs. The home team's shoulders dropped as Sri Lanka went into the break at 359/5 in their second innings, having collected 104 runs in the session at a quick pace.

Alzarri Joseph, even though expensive, was trusted with the second new ball and justified the move with an early breakthrough for the hosts. Having gone wicketless in the first innings and being flicked for a four by de Silva straight up, he came back hard with an inswinger at express pace to breach the half-centurion's defences and sent him packing in only the second over of the morning.

However, with the wicket easing up for batting, Sri Lanka's batsmen applied themselves well and made a solid recovery through a century partnership between Nissanka and Dickwella. The duo had their contrasting ways - Nissanka, on debut, was more sedate at the start of the new partnership, while Dickwella played with typical aggression. However, Nissanka picked up the pace once the pair went past 50 of their stand.

West Indies bowlers were either too short or wide and offered far too many freebies despite picking up the new ball first thing in the morning. Dickwella capitalised on the wayward deliveries to find his unusual scoring gaps and quickly race to the fifty-run stand with Nissanka after taking Sri Lanka's lead past the 200-run mark.

Nissanka reached the rare milestone of a fifty on Test debut with a boundary to backward point, using the pace of Shannon Gabriel to his advantage to guid