OPINION
Follow UsEvery fictional time-traveling film usually has one or multiple characters warning the protagonist about what could go wrong if a time machine is misused. Life, of course, isn’t Doctor Who but on the first day of Galle, Australia looked like a commoner that’d gotten hold of the TARDIS. And they seemed to have used it to bring back the good ol’ days of Steve Smith (who wouldn’t?).
Whether anyone warned Australia about a time machine's potential grave consequences, we don't know. But it looks like they might have ended up turning back the clock a bit too much. Because what unfolded on Days 2, 3 and 4 of the second Test was straight out of 2016. After 4 flawless Tests in the subcontinent, here was an Australian side that, barring a couple of players, looked like it’d never played in Asia before.
An innings defeat against a despondent Sri Lankan unit that had half the first team wiped away by Covid — fair to say Pat Cummins has been handed a timely reality check. He can do wrong, and so can his side. He knows this now.
But it's not all doom and gloom as the Aussies, in the process, have learnt a few valuable lessons that they can take back with them. The sucky part is that they’ve dropped valuable WTC points and have to live with the fact that they were rinsed essentially by a second string Lankan unit.
Bat the opponent out of the game when you have the chance
Getting bowled out for 151 on a Day 4 Galle wicket is not a sin. But posting merely 364 in the first innings after being 204/2 at one stage certainly is. Especially in the subcontinent, after you’ve won the toss. When the dust settles, Australia will realize that it was in the first innings that they lost the encounter.
Some 40 overs into the contest, it became evident that this Galle wicket was inherently different from the one dished out in the first Test. There was no inconsistent bounce, the ball was not turning square and it was a traditional subcontinent wicket in which you needed to capitalize in the first innings when the pitch is still intact.
Australia didn’t, Sri Lanka did.
While it is true that it was the wicket of Alex Carey early on Day 2 that triggered the collapse, the visitors will look back on Marnus Labuschagne’s 104 as the big missed opportunity.
Labuschagne was in the midst of a 134-run stand with Smith, who looked untroubled and in total control, and the duo could have run the Sri Lankan bowlers to the ground. Labuschagne, though, perished moments before tea immediately after bringing up his ton. His dismissal paved a way back into the first innings for the hosts, who never looked back.
Labuschagne not making big scores in the first innings, leaving runs in the field, is becoming a slightly concerning pattern now. Post his double-ton against New Zealand at the SCG, the Queenslander has been dismissed six times between 74 and 108 in the first innings. He’s not made a single daddy-hundred in this period, his highest score reading 108.
Australia will hope that, come the home summer, Labuschagne gets back to scoring daddy tons like he did in the initial phase of his career, because mere 90s and 100s won’t suffice in six months time in India.
Travis Head against spin — the less said, the better
Travis Head might have played a part in the victory in the first Test through his four-fer in the second innings, but the truth is, Australia, across both Tests, were handicapped with the bat due to his presence. Head, in the series, scored 23 runs in 3 innings at an average of 7.66. That is 2 fewer than Nathan Lyon and 24 fewer than Pat Cummins, who were both in the XI exclusively for their bowling.
This is Head’s first tour of Sri Lanka and in a way, it’s true that he cannot be judged on the basis of 3 innings, but he’s bombed across the entire Asia stretch (3 Tests vs Pakistan, 2 vs Sri Lanka), averaging 15.17 across 7 innings.
5 of his 6 dismissals have come against spin and his average of 12.6 against the slower bowlers has only been not bettered by Lyon, Starc and Swepson.
The South Australian, in a way, in the first Test, was unlucky to be at the receiving end of a blinder from Dhananjaya de Silva but in the second, he fell in identical fashion in both innings, bowled, beaten off the outside edge after misreading the length, going back to a ball that he should have played off the front foot.
7 straight innings is a decent sample size and it does not read well when you have a high score of 26. With the India tour beckoning in March, Australia have a decision to make. The Glenn Maxwell Test comeback did not happen in Sri Lanka, but, as things stand, it would be quite a surprise if the Victorian ends up not starting the series against the Rohit Sharma-led Indian side.
David Warner’s inconsistency a problem too
After a hit and miss series in Pakistan in which he notched up two 50+ scores but ended up with an average of 33.80, David Warner had to be carried by his teammates in Sri Lanka. By no means did he get bamboozled as much as Head, but from a senior batter like Warner that has been on multiple subcontinent tours, a series return of 64 runs @ 21.33 is borderline unacceptable.
We know Australia will not be axing Warner from the Test side anytime soon, but his lack of contribution away from home is becoming a serious concern for the side: across his last 10 away Tests, the southpaw has averaged 18.22, passing the fifty-run mark just thrice in 19 attempts.
Questions won’t be asked now because he still has enough credits left, but the selectors’ opinion could potentially change should Warner endure a lean home summer.
How to stop blowing reviews?
This looks like a lesson Australia will never learn. They keep blowing reviews for fun, and it keeps costing them matches.
Had Australia not blown all their three reviews by the 80th over, Chandimal would have walked back to the pavilion for 30. In the end, they paid the price for being desperate as the right-hander ended up adding 176 runs of his own to single-handedly slay the visitors.
It is true that the umpiring standards in the game were extremely poor — about a gazillion decisions were overturned in total — but ultimately Australia have no one but themselves to blame, for DRS exists to weed out howlers; you’re not the victim if you waste your reviews hastily.
At the conclusion of Day 3, head coach Andrew McDonald said that he was ‘pleased’ with the team’s decision-making process when it comes to reviews. Three years of evidence suggests that the process might need a re-think.
