Quantcast

Match Report:

Scorecard

Australia thump SL to claim series win

Finch blazes record half-century, Hastings takes six and Bailey's 90no sees tourists home

Ignited by incendiary Aaron Finch and inspired by another brave knock from subcontinent specialist George Bailey, Australia secured some pride as well as some silverware by taking out the ODI Series against Sri Lanka in Dambulla.

On the back of a career-best 6-45 from John Hastings that restricted Sri Lanka to a modest 50-over total of 212, Australia launched themselves at the target on a slow pitch that was supposed to make shot-making a grave challenge.

That decision to employ a used pitch rather than the pristine, ready-to-go version alongside it meant any score beyond 250 was going to be tough to chase, unless someone was able to pluck a special knock.

As it turned out, Australia found two such willing contributors – Bailey with his unbeaten 90 and Finch with a whirlwind 55 in the first half a dozen overs – while the only blow landed for Sri Lanka was the loss of their captain Angelo Mathews with what appeared to be a serious calf strain.

Duke decisive with career-best haul

With the five-match ODI Series now decided in the tourists’ favour at 3-1 with the remaining game at Pallekele next Sunday, Sri Lanka seem set to be without their leader for the two T20 Internationals over the following week.

Accepting that batting on a wicket that was past its best before this game started would never be easier than when the ball was hard and new, the Australians exploded out of the blocks.

Well, Finch did, after his skipper and fellow opener David Warner had played out a maiden from the first over bowled by Sri Lanka’s sole remaining seamer Thisara Perera.

Finch set himself to build the foundation, and almost set a new record in the process, a swing and a miss at what ended up being a bye costing him the chance to break the mark for the fastest 50 by an Australian in ODI cricket.

Finch flays equal-fastest fifty

He equalled that record when he hauled left-arm spinner Sachith Pathirana, the latest 'mystery’ spinner hauled into the Sri Lanka squad having played three ODIs in more than a year, beyond the square leg rope to post a half century from 18 balls.

But in losing his wicket the next ball, which also cost Australia a review when Warner convinced him to unsuccessfully challenge his lbw dismissal, triggered one of those mini-collapses that had proved so costly during the Tests.

Quick Single: Finch flays equal-fastest Aussie fifty

Usman Khawaja’s forgettable tour added another brief chapter when he was also judged lbw for a second-ball duck, although the squandered review could have saved him had it been available with the ball sliding down leg.

When Warner went to the first ball of Pathirana's next over, bowled though he would have gone stumped had it not clipped the bails, the Sri Lankans sensed the sort of batting freefall that had decided the Test series.

But Bailey employed his now favoured reverse sweep with devastating effect to spread the field, and despite a few nervous moments against bowlers turning it square, he and Travis Head turned the screw.

Brilliant Bailey sweeps Aussies to success

Though Head benefited from the sort of luck that the Australians had begun to believe was impounded at customs upon their arrival on the tropical island and never released when he was bowled by Dilruwan Perera for 13.

But the realisation that Perera had overstepped was confirmed by video replays, the indignity of the first no-ball of the series compounded by the free-hit that ensued.

By the time Perera did eventually get his man, lbw in the time honoured fashion pushing forward to a ball that snuck past the inside edge, Head had posted his career-best ODI score for the fifth consecutive innings with 40 to his name.

More prudently, he and Bailey had lifted to total within 20 of what was by then an assured victory with a fourth-wicket partnership of 100 from 130 balls.

But the turning point of the match, and perhaps the remaining game of this series and the two T20 Internationals to follow, came in the 28th over of Sri Lanka’s innings when Mathews took off for a single from the bowling of Hastings.

Pushing off his right leg having played back in this crease, the 29-year-old pulled up immediately lame and resorted to hopping his way to the non-striker’s end.

Mathews retires hurt before making late cameo

Having removed his right pad and been attended by the team physiotherapist, Mathews was clearly unable to walk but bravely faced one more delivery before he limped painstakingly back to the dressing room, retired hurt on 28.

Mathews had last Saturday voiced his surprise that his rival captain of the Test series and initial ODIs Steve Smith had returned home midway through a difficult tour.

Now, with the ODI series lost and through no making of his own, Mathews seems certain to miss the final phase of what had been a triumphant resurgence of his young, largely unheralded team.

Quick Single: Mathews retires hurt with suspected calf injury

He had already been shaken earlier in the afternoon by a bouncer from Scott Boland, brought into Australia’s team despite bearing heavy strapping on his recently fractured right hand to grant Josh Hazlewood a rest, that clattered into Mathews’ helmet and snapped off the detachable neck guards.

After that blow he took several minutes to regain his thoughts, and re-fit his panel-beaten lid.

Certainly his absence this afternoon robbed Sri Lanka’s innings of momentum at a time when they were steadily restoring the equilibrium after yet another horror start.

That began, as with pretty much every batting effort of this campaign in which the home team has won more than their share of matches and an even higher proportion of coin tosses, in the now guaranteed manner with Mitchell Starc taking a wicket in his opening over.

Starc's happy knack an opener's nightmare

Although this time he was picking on someone clearly not of his stature.

Sri Lanka opted to replace retired former skipper Tillakaratne Dilshan at the top of the order with uncapped 18-year-old Vishwa Fernando, added to the ODI squad on the strength of several solid performances for the national under-19 team in England earlier in the year.

But throwing a teenager into a role that none of the grown-ups had been able to handle across three Tests as many ODIs was surely asking for trouble, and it arrived – as expected – on the fifth ball of the innings when he became the latest pinned in front of his stumps.

When Sri Lanka’s two best-performed batters of this series – Kusal Mendis and vice-captain Dinesh Chandimal – both departed before the 10th over, the job of resurrection fell to Mathews and the other newly installed opener (and third Test century maker) Dhananjaya de Silva.

The loss of Mathews at 3-115 coincided with de Silva’s struggle to find timing and impetus on a surface as worn and tired as the security staff fighting a running battle with the thousands of punters massing outside the ground looking for an entry point to the forest-ringed venue.

Less than two overs later he was gone, swinging in hope at Hastings and his top-edge carrying no further than midwicket.

Hastings’ double-fist pump celebration that followed that breakthrough suggested he felt luck had finally turned his way after he struggled early with the wind howling off the neighbouring lake, and much better fortune was surely to follow.

Four of the next six wickets fell to the genial Victorian as he returned the second-best bowling figures in Asia by an Australian in ODIs after Mitchell Johnson’s 6-31 at Pallekele on the previous tour to Sri Lanka in 2011.

The ploy in recycling the pitch used for Sunday’s first game in Dambulla, even though there was a pitch just two strips to the south on the heavily grassed wicket block that had clearly been prepared for today’s match, summarily backfired on the hosts.

Just how that unused pitch will hold up for the first women’s ODI between the Southern Stars and Sri Lanka in a fortnight – which the ground staff suggested as the reason for the advanced state of its preparation – remains to be seen.

But the loss of early wickets today coupled with Mathews’s injury and a lack of pace on the ball, even from the seam-based attack, meant Sri Lanka’s middle and lower-order batters could find no timing and even less momentum.

SL set Aussies 213 after Hastings' six

From 3-121 they slumped to 8-199 when Mathews hobbled back on to the field to sustained applause, clearly signalling that if Sri Lanka were to push on past 200 those runs would need to come from boundaries.

As the sole fit batter of any repute still standing (without leaning on his bat for support), Pathirana’s decision to loft Hastings to the long-off fielder was curious enough.

But his decision to run through for a single while the ball was in the air, leaving his lame captain to not only drag himself to the other end but surrender the strike given it was the end of the over defied all logic.

But there was a few perplexing moments throughout a match in which Australia, despite another onset of the wobbles at the top of their innings, finally showed they had come to grips with the vagaries of the subcontinent.

And the other myriad challenges that cricket in this part of the world can throw up.