What to do after an exercise in perfection? Australia’s men ran last week’s Test match in Galle as brutally as their counterpart women did in Melbourne, both teams completing a win by an innings and plenty within 90 seconds of one another last Saturday.
The ticked boxes for the men’s side can fill a page: rack up more than 600 batting first; blazing fifty for your pinch-hit opener who was picked to blaze fifties; huge hundred for your other opener who had been a long time without one; third hundred in four Tests for your resurgent talisman, the same guy who is temporary captain and pulls the reins as well as ever; ton on debut for your No 5 who was a conditions pick ahead of others already capped; comfortable not out for your keeper who might otherwise be threatened by the debutant; bowl the opposition out twice following on in barely 100 overs across the two innings; wickets for your sole quick in a ram-raid at the top; wickets for your veteran spinner conducting the middle; and nine in the match for your left-arm spinner who almost missed with a broken thumb.
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The only performance of concern might be third spinner Todd Murphy, who was hardly required in a wicketless first innings, picked up a solitary pole in the second via a straight ball and a bad leave, and got tapped around at five an over across the match. But such can be the luck of the draw in a triple-spin attack, where one bowler might be targeted out of desperation when the others do well, and those roles can change from one match to the next.
Australia will doubtless go in unchanged for the second and final Test that starts on Thursday. A better showing for Murphy, bigger scores for Marnus Labuschagne and Beau Webster, and they’ll be replete, having already retained the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy as the current holders. It won’t have any effect on the World Test Championship standings, but it will underline Australia as worthy finalists, at the same time as England and India’s most senior administrators make plans to shred the current structure and start over having not qualified.
Still, a dominant performance in one Test doesn’t guarantee the same in the next. Australia had the luck of the coin on a pitch that was flat for two days and then took more and more turn, as some Galle tracks can do. Steve Smith’s delight at choosing to bat was evident, doubly so given that 70% of his career hundreds have come batting first. He soon enough raised that mark to 71.5%.
But Smith was dropped on one, having moved from 9,999 career runs to 10,000. Usman Khawaja was dropped too, and both veteran opener and Travis Head were given reprieves when Sri Lanka didn’t review wrong decisions. Take those wickets early and Australia could have been a few down for not many, with a different sort of match unfolding. Sri Lanka will never know what might have happened, but they were not initially a team without a chance.
They will need a drastic turnaround in attitude and application, however, and that starts from the captain down. Dhananjaya da Silva has often been a dynamic cricketing presence, so it was all the more mystifying that as Australia’s score ballooned, he kept turning to the same four bowlers again and again. And even among that quartet, his specialist seamer Asitha Fernando only bowled 15 overs. His three spinners bowled 139 of them, and in a side with three credible part-time options, including one who can bowl with both arms, da Silva called on none of them.
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It was by a mile the most runs conceded by a four-man attack, and it remains inexplicable, more so than the harried and hurried shot selection that caused Sri Lanka’s batting downfall. Those at least were in the heat of the moment, while the bowling madness was persisted with across two days with a night’s sleep to think it over. Questions about that don’t just rest with the captain, but with the coaches who obviously didn’t intervene.
So the second Test depends on Sri Lanka showing up this time, and it also depends on what the ground staff deliver. At a guess that is more likely to be a pitch that spins from day one, given the new track already looked ready to play on four days out from the start. It’s not that Sri Lanka showed any aptitude against Australia’s spin, but at least a severely turning track would level out any advantage from the toss. Australia have prepared for those conditions too, and with the run-fest banked, it would be much more entertaining and instructive to see how they combat difficulty.
