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In a one-day series that has thrown up many questions and not enough answers, the issue of Australia’s brittle batting line-up once again came thundering to the fore through a batting bloodbath at the Gabba.
The first couple of overs in Fridays third one-day international suddenly energised a Sri Lankan unit that might have initially felt more like an ugly sacrifice on a typically good-looking Gabba track.
You could sense the boyish excitement and anticipation that suddenly came over the bowlers. The ball was moving.
As a rule this is always enough to set off adrenaline shots in hot headed leather slingers, as an amplified Nurwan Kulasekara and his cohorts so obviously displayed yesterday.
But there seemed an urgency and sense of the inevitable about the Sri Lankan bowlers.
They smelt the idle blood of Australian batsmen whose weaknesses against a swinging rock are starting to resemble a cricketing form of kryptonite.
It’s true that one of the oldest notions in cricket is the one that suggests all batsmen are susceptible to a ball released at speed that doesn’t hold its line.
But the spectacularly meek failure of technique by top order player after top order player yesterday hints at more endemic problems.
Australian batters seemed to wear the challenge of a swinging six-stitcher less like an albatross and more like an anvil, anchoring their feet and fight to the turf.
And the problems could potentially stretch further than the dressing room of a dizzyingly rotated one-day squad.
A team that is used as an experiment will, we are finding through bitter experience, not form the sense of occasion and team cohesion that an established combination can.
In this era of IPMS, it’s probably to be expected.
What shone through in yesterdays horror show was a top order that had no answers to a confident and in rhythm bowling attack, bowlers who suddenly found the conditions in their favour and the wherewithal to take full advantage.
These were batters of well-established reputation and rightfully demand respect as top performers in all forms of the game.
The match will likely be put down as an anomaly; an aberration on the path to fulfilling the selection panel’s ultimate goal. There is a case for looking at the debacle in these less than alarmist ways.
However the concern is not for the results in this barely worthwhile series, nor for players selected due to what they may offer in the distant future.
Concerns that exist are for experienced players that failed to deal with Friday’s adverse but not unplayable conditions. Conditions that could well be repeated during winter tours later this year.
Four of the top six in yesterdays batting order are current Test players. Another, David Hussey, has been mentioned as replacing his brother in the middle order for the upcoming tour of India.
These are Test players that are likely to form the backbone of a batting order that will be asked to stymy and dominate an English attack not short on bowlers well versed in the art of swing.
Nerves for the very near future may begin to fray.
It was an ODI with bowlers using new balls from both ends and being played in front of a modest crowd. Obviously not conditions that could reasonably be compared to Test match play.
But consider that before yesterday Australia had only ever recorded one lower ODI score in their history, and questions of batting technique could be seen as more pressing than those of player ambivalence.
We take nothing away from Sri Lanka, and they take plenty from the win.
It was a supreme bowling performance by a team who, when their perfect storm hits, mix blistering pace and hypnotic swing to devastating effect.
Their own perilous batting performance aside, Sri Lanka outclassed an experienced and well established Australian batting line-up.
Australia have a batting order that, rotation or not, should be able to show more gumption than was offered yesterday.
Balls moving quickly through the air are always going to bother players regardless of class.
What separates the champion from the also ran is the ability to weather a perfect storm and come out the other side plundering what will inevitably be the meagre offerings left in its wake.
Yes it was only an ODI, it was only an experiment and it can happen anytime to anyone.
But it should never happen like that.
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