Rampaging Cummins leads Aussie rout

Australia celebrated their national day with a nostalgic nod to the past by flattening Sri Lanka on their historically happy hunting ground, thanks largely to a bowling effort for the ages from Pat Cummins.

The freshly installed Test vice-captain returned career-best Test innings figures of 6-23 – and a maiden 10-wicket match haul – as Sri Lanka meekly rolled over for 139 to lose by an innings and 40 runs in barely two and a half days.

At various stages of a one-sided day, the 25-year-old boasted figures of 3-0 and then 5-11, and might have finished with an even more impressive haul had Sri Lanka not been rendered one batter short, with fast bowler Lahiru Kumara hobbled and unable to take his place.

When ninth wicket Suranga Lakmal charged down the pitch and was emphatically stumped at 5.03pm Queensland time, it completed Australia's second Test win since the sandpaper controversy in South Africa last March.

It was also their first Test victory by an innings margin in more than a year, since their triumph over England at the SCG last January.

While today's result bucked a recent form line that showed series losses to South Africa, Pakistan and India, it reinforced the men's team's impregnability at the Gabba where they have remained undefeated for 30 Tests stretching back to 1988.

The win by Tim Paine's team not only crowned Australia Day celebrations, it effectively granted players a two-day break before preparations for the second (and final) Domain Series Test begins at Canberra's Manuka Oval next Friday.

That match represents the final Test hit-out for the fifth-ranked Australians before they begin their Ashes quest against England in the UK, where they have not enjoyed a series win since 2001.

By that time, banned duo Steve Smith and David Warner will be available for selection (with opener Cameron Bancroft's ban having already been served) and the contributions from Australia's young guns in this Test means that assignment might be marginally less daunting than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Of particular merit at the Gabba was the debut of fast bowler Jhye Richardson who provided a perfect foil to Cummins and claimed 2-19 from 13 immaculate overs today, to add further credibility to the 3-26 he took from 14 overs in Sri Lanka's first innings.

That, coupled with the batting of fellow debutant Kurtis Patterson and other comparative Test novices Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne and Marcus Harris suggests selectors will have the nucleus of a squad when they convene to discuss their Ashes options.

There's no question that England on their home patch pose an infinitely sterner challenge than an under-manned Sri Lanka, whose injury woes worsened today when seamer Kumara was diagnosed with a torn hamstring that has ended his tour.

But given the gloom that has come to engulf the men's team over the past 10 months, today's victory was as welcome as it was clinical.

Not even the staunchest patriot might have dared script the start that Australia made to day three, under brilliant Brisbane sunshine.

Barely had the final strains of the national anthem stopped echoing through the Gabba grandstands than Cummins had effectively put paid to any meaningful Sri Lanka resistance.

Having ensured his team ended the previous evening on a high by having opener Dimuth Karunaratne caught behind from the night's final delivery, he returned less than 15 hours later and proved even more lethal.

After Richardson began the day with a maiden, Cummins' second offering of the day was a brute of a ball to Dinesh Chandimal, Sri Lanka's captain and their second-most prolific Test batter in the current line-up (after Karunaratne).

At a shade under 140kph, it leapt from a length as Chandimal pressed warily forward and took the shoulder of the right-hander's bat before it looped to the gully where Patterson completed the sort of overhead catch more redolent of an Australian Rules football forward.

At 2-17 and with their most accomplished Test batters back in the dressing room, the tourists' hope of erasing the still distant 162-run deficit resided with their most promising talent, 23-year-old Kusal Mendis.

 

It was during the previous Test series between the two nations that Mendis, playing just his seventh Test and without a century to his name, single-handedly turned Sri Lanka's hefty first innings arrears into a memorable victory by plundering 176 in the second dig.

But that memorable score came in conditions far more familiar to the right-hander who has made all-but one of his six Test match hundreds on low, slow pitches in Asia and the Caribbean.

On the fast, bouncy deck at the Gabba he showed no inclination to hang around, and aimed a cavalier attempted drive at the fifth ball he faced from Cummins which, unsurprisingly, yielded nothing more than a thick edge that flew face-height to Joe Burns at second slip.

That dismissal gave Cummins the sort of bowling figures more often associated with schoolboy cricket – 3-0 from 2.1 overs that had looked ever-more likely to produce wickets than runs from a timid Sri Lanka top-order.

The introduction of spinner Nathan Lyon, after Richardson's six suffocating overs had cost just seven runs, looked to have brought further pain for the tourists when opener Lahiru Thirimanne was adjudged lbw to the spinner's second delivery.

However, a belated call for review brought a rare reprieve for the visitors with ball-tracking technology showing it bouncing over the stumps by some distance.

Which meant temporary relief for Sri Lanka, but longer-term angst if a spinner was able to generate such a degree of lift from the pitch.

Not that the bounce was responsible for the next batter to succumb.

Roshen Silva had survived a confident lbw shout against Cummins, then in his sixth consecutive over amid enervating heat, only to edge to the slips two deliveries later.

That gave Australia's new vice-captain 4-9 from seven overs, and rendered Sri Lanka a rabble at 4-35, still 144 adrift of forcing Australia to a second innings and fighting a rearguard battle to send the match into a fourth day.

It was a prospect that flickered briefly as Dhananjaya de Silva and Thirimanne stood resolute, if not overly combative, for an hour as Cummins and Richardson took a deserved break.

But when Richardson returned for another spell before the tea break, he went through de Silva's speculative defensive jab and tilted back his off-stump as Sri Lanka lurched closer to an innings defeat.

Come the day's first break, the tourists reeled at 5-75 with only Thirimanne (31 not out) and flamboyant keeper Niroshan Dickwella (3 not out) standing between Australia's rampant seam attack and the tourists' tailenders.

Seven minutes after play resumed, that line of little resistance was breached when Thirimanne's vigil was ended, though not without a tinge of controversy.

 

After umpire Marais Erasmus adjudged the veteran opener caught behind the wicket, Thirimanne opted to challenge the decision almost as an afterthought and the expert evidence showed neither a 'hot spot' on the bat or a noise that coincided with the ball whistling past its outside edge.

Yet the small aural blip that appeared a frame or two after the supposed moment of impact was deemed sufficient for the decision to stand, and Thirimanne trudged disconsolately back to the pavilion.

For the second time in three days, Dickwella frustrated Australia with his inventive strokeplay and combative character and umpire Erasmus felt the need to intervene on a couple of occasions to quell on-field tensions.

However, once Dickwella fell to a smart catch by Marcus Harris at square leg and then Dilruwan Perera was the victim of a much more spectacular one-handed snare in the gully, Australia's day was effectively made.

Australia XI: Marcus Harris, Joe Burns, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head, Kurtis Patterson, Tim Paine (c & wk), Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Jhye Richardson, Nathan Lyon

Sri Lanka XI: Dimuth Karunaratne, Lahiru Thirimanne, Dinesh Chandimal (c), Kusal Mendis, Roshen Silva, Dhananjaya de Silva, Niroshan Dickwella (wk), Dilruwan Perera, Suranga Lakmal, Dushmantha Chameera, Lahiru Kumara

Domain Test Series v Sri Lanka

Australia: Tim Paine (c/wk), Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Kurtis Patterson, Will Pucovski, Matt Renshaw, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Peter Siddle

Sri Lanka: Dinesh Chandimal (c), Dimuth Karunaratne, Lahiru Thirimanne, Kusal Mendis, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Dhananjaya de Silva, Roshen Silva, Niroshan Dickwella (wk), Kusal Perera, Dilruwan Perera, Lakshan Sandakan, Suranga Lakmal, Nuwan Pradeep, Lahiru Kumara, Dushmantha Chameera, Kasun Rajitha

First Test: Australia won by an innings and 40 runs

Second Test: February 1-5, Canberra