Well short of six feet, and operating only in the 130kph range, Asitha Fernando is not the mean fast bowler you might build in a lab. What he is instead: accurate, intense, indefatiguable.
This is why new bowling coach Ryan van Niekerk has taken to calling him the "diesel engine". Of Sri Lanka's international seam bowlers, Asitha is the least likely to break down, the most likely to be named in red-ball and white-ball squads, and when nothing is happening on the pitch, increasingly the most likely to wangle a breakthrough.
Like a diesel engine, he tends to have a big presence. Yashasvi Jaiswal found this out when soon after being bowled off the inside edge, Asitha needled a heated response out of him, leading to a brief altercation during which Jaiswal's helmeted head and Asitha's bare one touched.
In any case, Asitha was not only Sri Lanka's most penetrative bowler on a difficult day, taking three wickets, but also their most economical frontline bowler, conceding runs at 2.87 an over. Of the 16 overs he bowled, five were maidens.
"I like to tease him in the team space - he's a bit like a diesel engine," van Niekerk said after play on day one. "The more he goes, the better he gets and the longer he goes."
Asitha, who has for years now been Sri Lanka's top fast bowler in the format, had had a long layoff in red-ball internationals, owing to their barren Test schedule over the past 14 months. But upon his return on flat decks in the Caribbean in June, Asitha averaged a very respectable 29.57. So far in this series, he has taken nine wickets at 15.55. This first day of the second Test was his best yet, given the flat conditions at the SSC.
"From his point of view, it's actually putting in the time of bowling a lot," van Niekerk said about Asitha's preparation, given the skewed Test schedule. "And he's got an incredible skillset and amazing accuracy when he bowls. If we can get him bowling for long periods of time, that's the key to sort of his success that I've seen in my time with him.
"In the West Indies, he had come off a knee injury that he was sort of sitting in a space where he hadn't bowled a lot. Test cricket requires a big build-up. He had the one-day series (in the West Indies) which had two rained-off games, so he wasn't able to get a lot of those overs in."
And yet he has impressed against India so far, and now sits within sight of becoming the sixth Sri Lanka fast bowler to 100 Test wickets. He needs four more to reach triple figures.
Perhaps more importantly, he is increasingly becoming Sri Lanka's go-to bowler, across conditions, which is unusual for a seam bowler. In this decade Sri Lanka have put more effort into developing their seam-bowling talent, and in this format at least, no quick has been as impressive as Asitha.
Ahead of this Test, captain Dhananjaya de Silva had asked for a little more from his fast bowlers, as a captain who has made it a point to invest in them. Asitha delivered Sri Lanka's most probing spells, bowling Jaiswal and Ravindra Jadeja with balls that moved appreciably back at the left-handers off the seam. He also had Shubman Gill caught behind off a short delivery.
"Dhananjaya has played 70 Tests and he's incredibly experienced," van Niekerk said. "He understands how to manage the bowling group. And in general he's had less seamers to work with most of the time, and the spinners have done a bulk of the job. He's managed the seamers incredibly well and has got a good relationship with them. Good captains know when to get the best out of their seamers at the right time and how to actually fire them up for spells. That relationship with the fast bowlers is working brilliantly for us."