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A wonderful rearguard action saved Sri Lanka from the brink of catastrophe yesterday after Australia reduced them to 5-26 in the third Test at Colombo.
On a day when the Australia selectors made the utterly baffling decision of dropping Usman Khawaja and Joe Burns, the tourists started in blazing style before the hosts took control.
Sri Lanka had looked in danger of being shot out for double figures when Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon ran through them in the opening session. Then Dinesh Chandimal and Dhananjaya de Silva expertly soaked up the heavy pressure before applying some of them own as the day wore on.
It was a truly remarkable turnaround. Sri Lanka went from being on their knees to arguably being ahead in the Test match by day’s end. The pitch played very well at this high-scoring ground, where 422 is the average total by the team batting first in the past ten Tests.
Yet Sri Lanka may feel they already have enough runs to keep Australia honest, so feeble has been the batting of the tourists this series. They have Chandimal and de Silva to thank for that.
While it would be easy to look at the scorecard and assume Australia’s attack went off the boil following the first session, that was not the case. In fact, it was Australia’s most disciplined bowling effort of the series so far. Starc did as Starc now does, reaping wickets for fun with the new ball and remaining highly potent with the weathered version.
His new ball partner Josh Hazlewood was his typical self, landing delivery after delivery on a good length just outside off stump. The one difference in Australia’s bowling display was with the slow men. For the first time in the series, the visiting spinners managed to tie down the Sri Lanka batsmen.
Lead tweaker Nathan Lyon had gone at 4.1 runs per over across the first two Tests, while rookie Jon Holland was carted at 5.3 runs per over on debut. Yesterday they offered captain Steve Smith the kind of control he so desperately lacked at Galle and Kandy.
Lyon and Holland wheeled down a whopping 55 overs at a miserly 1.9 runs per over. After picking up two early scalps, Lyon was countered well by the patient Chandimal and de Silva. The off spinner bowled quicker yesterday than he has at perhaps any stage of his career, with his average speed a slippery 91kmh.
To put this in context, Sri Lankan finger spinners Rangana Herath and Dilruwan Perera both average about 82kmh this series, while Indian offie Ravi Ashwin has averaged 80kmh in the ongoing Test in the Caribbean.
Holland did not follow the lead of his more experienced counterpart. Rather than spearing the ball through and trying to beat the batsmen off the pitch, the Victorian looked to undo them through the air. Bowling 8kmh slower than Lyon, Holland operated with generous flight, unafraid to toss the ball up above the eyeline of his opponents.
Where at Galle he had sprayed the ball all over the pitch, here Holland rediscovered the accuracy which has earned him success at domestic level. He bowled without luck, missing out on a lineball review for a caught-behind decision before later having an edge ricochet off the gloves of wicketkeeper Peter Nevill.
All-rounder Mitch Marsh was barely required, sending down just five overs.
This made it all the more ponderous why the selectors felt the need to pick a second all-rounder for this match in Moises Henriques. The New South Welshman did not bowl a single over yesterday.
The dropping of Khawaja in itself was nonsensical, considering he had made 713 runs at 102 in his last six Tests before this tour of Sri Lanka. But to jettison your number three batsman for a bits-and-pieces player who has just four first-class tons in ten years is truly absurd.
There was little more sense applied in the ruthless sacking of Burns. The 26-year-old Queenslander was man-of-the-match in his previous Test before this series, cracking 170 and 65 in Christchurch to lead Australia to a 2-0 series win over the Kiwis. Since being recalled to the Test side last November, Burns had piled up 726 runs at 43, including three tons from ten Tests.
He was replaced by a batsman in Shaun Marsh who is seven years older and has a comfortably worse Test record. South Africa’s dynamic pace unit of Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Kagiso Rabada would be elated to bowl at a top six featuring Henriques and the Marsh brothers when the first Test starts at Perth in 11 weeks’ time.
This major selection gaffe recalls the days when the likes of Rob Quiney, Michael Beer, Xavier Doherty and Ashton Agar were parachuted into the Test team on a whim. It may well have a significant destabilising effect on an Australian team which had gelled so well over its unbeaten run of eight Tests home-and-away last summer.