Smith, Marsh lead strong fightback

Shaun Marsh knows from bitter, and not altogether distant experience that a meaningful score on his return to Test cricket does not guarantee him ongoing tenure.

It's less than a year since he filled in for an injured teammate for a couple of matches, notched a career-high 182 and was involved in a record partnership but found himself surplus to requirements until recalled to shore up a flaky top-order in Sri Lankan conditions no Australian has mastered.

But the unbeaten 64 he scored with deftness and confidence, and in concert with his skipper Steve Smith during the final session of the last Test’s second day seems certain to win him a trip on Australia’s next Test mission to Asia.

Quick Single: Smith tops Ponting to 4000-run milestone

The four-match series against India in February and March next year.

Even if, as has been suggested in some quarters, his inclusion as a replacement opener for Joe Burns in this match doesn’t extend to the start of the home summer against South Africa come November.

Image Id: ~/media/A0203651C6E54A3D8465D8CF702D7AA0 Image Caption: Shaun Marsh will resume on Monday unbeaten on 64 // Getty

Such was the impact Marsh made in Sri Lanka in his maiden Test series five years ago, when he scored an historic hundred on debut at Kandy, it has been a constant source of wonder from local scribes and fans as to how he could be in the touring party but out of the starting XI.

That level of bewilderment will also increase after Marsh’s studied effort in today’s final session and his unbroken partnership of 120 with Smith (61no) that will resume tomorrow with Australia 1-141 and still 214 runs behind Sri Lanka’s first innings of 355.

Fears that the dry SSC pitch would become all but unplayable have been allayed by the series-high tally posted by the home side after their top-order was skittled in the opening hour and a half, and then by Australia’s most productive partnership of a run-shy series.

With the previous benchmark being the 62 fashioned by Smith and Usman Khawaja (who with Burns was omitted from this match to make way for Marsh and Moises Henriques), although one that could have been easily truncated if Sri Lanka had clutched a couple of tough chances in the evening shadows.

But in light of the vigour and fury unleashed by Australia’s bowlers on the pitch’s crease areas that have crumbled and disappeared under their heavy foot traffic over the first day and a half and now present a real injury risk to quicks from either side, batting fourth will be a daunting prospect.

Image Id: ~/media/5B720CA48BEB4FEFA956C5DB01F75829 Image Caption: Smith notched his 4000th Test run on day two in Colombo // Getty

Which means a minimum first innings total of 500 seems Australia’s best realistic hope of extracting a consolation win from a series Sri Lanka secured with wins at Pallekele and Galle.

Staring at a first-innings deficit previously unseen in this series where no team had reached 300 until today, Australia’s pre-match promise (delivered by Smith) that batters should wield a 'licence to thrill' was clearly embraced by opener David Warner.

Who belted the very first delivery with the brand new ball for six over mid-wicket, although the fact it was a knee-high full-toss from a gentle off-spinner undoubtedly pared back the degree of difficulty.

But as etymologists know, there can be little difference between adventure and misadventure as Warner – a highly successful producer of childrens' books – learned when his licence took him out of his crease and down the pitch towards Sri Lanka’s other opening spin bowler Dhananjaya de Silva.

It was the last ball of the innings' fourth over, and it set an ominous tone as de Silva dragged it into the pitch which meant Warner was always going to be challenged by the length and left with little option but to change his stroke from the planned loft down the ground to a hurried defensive punch.

Which only yielded a bottom edge to reserve 'keeper Kusal Perera, donning the gloves to allow Dinesh Chandimal a brief pre-tea spell having spent much of the previous two days batting.

Warner screamed his frustration at himself as he threw his bat in the air and snatched it in anger at the start of his walk back to the sheds, with the prospect of only one more knock to prevent this being inked as the leanest scoring series (of three Tests or more) in his Test career.

But from a position that has become eerily familiar to both teams who have struggled to prevent the cascade of wickets at their outset of their respective innings, the Australians found a way a back into a Test that was slipping from their grasp midway through the day.

In a series that was decided before this game even got going.

When exhausted off-spinner Nathan Lyon fronted the media at the close of day one, he pointed to a scoreboard that showed Sri Lanka 5-214 and observed that – under regular assessment – would constitute an even battle after a full day’s toil.

But this has rarely been a ‘regular’ series, and every time the world’s top-ranked team has exerted any sort of grip on the inexperienced but unfazed Sri Lankans, they have wriggled free and taken control of the game with them.

And so it came to be once more, as 5-214 blew out to 7-300 and ultimately 9-355 which was deemed the innings end because spinner Rangana Herath could not return to the crease having retired hurt on 33 after struck amidships by Josh Hazlewood.

A position from which Australia was once more forced to mount a rear guard action in the knowledge that only once in their Test history have they conceded a first innings score of 300-plus on the subcontinent and come back to win the match.

That being against India in Bangalore almost 20 years ago.

Even before this campaign began snaking its way to its unforeseen conclusion, the value of first-innings runs were spoken about in hushed tones, in full knowledge of how difficult batting would be on pitches where spin was to be dominant from day one.

But it took until the final match, and a top-order collapse (5-26) that would consign most teams to a score of barely 100, for one of the combatants to make good on their promise to 'bat big'.

And it was Sri Lanka’s Dinesh Chandimal who held the eight-hour masterclass that showed all others how it might be achieved.

Chandimal contentedly played a support role to de Silva's maiden Test century a day earlier, and was expected to pick up the pace when his junior partner squeezed an inside edge to short leg off the bowling of Lyon early in the morning session.

But rather than think that 6-237 was a sufficient foundation to chase quick runs because it was already more than Australia had scored in their four previous attempts on this tour, the 26-year-old showed maturity belying his comparative rawness.

Not even the departure of Sri Lanka’s final recognised batter Dilruwan Perera – the only player to crest 50 in the teams' respective second innings at Galle last week – tempted Chandimal to squander an opportunity to advance the score cautiously forward.

And subject Australia's bowlers to more physical pain and mental anguish in the process.

Shortly before lunch Chandimal celebrated his seventh, and from the triumphant raising of his arms on completing the required single his most cherished, Test century that carried his team ever closer to the 300 that had proved unreachable across the first two Tests.

It was only after a half hour delay for a cloudburst above Colombo 7 that Australia’s trusted bowling weapon, strike man Starc, was able to elicit an error from one of the current Test game's foremost ‘keeper-batsmen as Peter Nevill completed his only catch of the 141-over innings.

Which, in noting that Nevill’s only other chances were a reflex chance off de Silva that struck the webbing of his outstretched right glove and a scrambled stumping half-chance from a ball that snuck between Chandimal’s legs, says everything about the quality of the batting and the lack of menace in the surface.

Starc then pocketed his third five-wicket bag in five completed innings from a series in which he has towered above his fellow bowlers as well the mainly diminutive Sri Lankan batters.

His 22 wickets at 13.27, which also dwarfs all other bowlers at this stage of the series, would be a remarkable achievement on pitches favourable to seam bowling.

In subcontinental conditions it has been bettered by only two Australian quicks – Alan Davidson (29 in 1959-60) and Geoff Dymock (24 in 1979), both in India – and those results came in five Test series.

It would seem that Starc will need to threaten Davidson’s benchmark if Australia is find a way of pegging back a win in this one-sided series.

At least a couple of his batsmen came to the party and allowed him to put his feet up for a few hours tonight before he is again called into action.