All posts by csb10.top

Rash strokes and poor decision-making cost Sri Lanka the P Sara Test. So says captain Dimuth Karunaratne.It is a difficult summary to argue against, given the nature of Sri Lanka’s demise on the fifth day in Colombo. Lahiru Thirimanne essentially ran himself out, attempting a single to midwicket off the fifth ball of the innings. Kusal Perera was caught in the slips slashing at a short delivery. Kusal Mendis and Angelo Mathews were both out playing defensive shots, but later, Dhananjaya de Silva was caught at second slip after advancing down the pitch.The first innings had been disappointing as well. Sri Lanka were all out for 244, before New Zealand replied with a declaration at 431 for 6.”It was a pretty good wicket in the first innings, and we didn’t execute our shots very well,” Karunaratne said. “The batsmen probably thought it was going to be a good, flat wicket and so the application wasn’t there. Even me, after getting 60 [65], I played a rash shot [in the first innings]. It was a good wicket and you have to put up a good score on it. The Kiwis batted really well. They put up huge totals and put us under pressure.”Tim Southee removes Dimuth Karunaratne•Associated Press

Freedom has been a buzzword in Karunaratne’s captaincy so far – his insistence that batsmen should be allowed to play their strokes is understood to be a key factor in the Test team’s recent success. Following this Test, though, Karunaratne was critical of his team-mates’ aggression.”When I say players should be free, I don’t mean that you just hit every ball that you see. It’s about keeping your mind free. If you at any time feel like you should play the reverse-sweep but you stop yourself, your’re restricting yourself. There are times when you can get runs from that shot, and when it’s a safe option. It’s about being relaxed. Freedom doesn’t mean swinging at every ball. It’s about playing with confidence. At times I felt our players really lacked patience. A Test is a very valuable thing, and batsmen should know how to play according to the situation. They should know how to handle that freedom.”It was on day four that New Zealand swung the match definitively in their direction, and on day four that Sri Lanka’s bowlers struggled the most, allowing the opposition to score 186 for the loss of just one wicket in 48 overs.”We got the wickets of the first three batsmen quickly, and I think we thought the other wickets would also come easily,” Karunaratne said. “But they batted really well, and the pitch also dried out a bit, and the moisture that was there disappeared. It stopped seaming around. Despite that, I think we could have bowled better, and bowled tighter.”But on the second day New Zealand bowled really well, drying up the runs by bowling on one side of the pitch. Apart from Suranga Lakmal and Dilruwan Perera our bowlers don’t have much experience, but I think they’ve played enough first-class cricket to stack one side of the field and bowl to that.”

Northamptonshire 142 (Stone 4-39) and 507 for 6 declared (Rossington 135*, Proctor 112* Thurston 96, Curran 58) drew with Warwickshire 369 for 8 (Bresnan 105, Yates 88)Northamptonshire secured a Bob Willis Trophy draw that felt like a win after seventh-wicket pair Adam Rossington and Luke Procter batted through the final day to crush the life out of Warwickshire’s victory bid at Edgbaston.Northamptonshire seemed to be hurling to defeat when, just after lunch on the third day, trailing by 227 on first innings, they hit 148 for 5 in their second. But from that point onwards they showed enormous resilience and resolve to bat their way to safety on a flattening pitch.The great escape was led by Rossington who dug in to deliver the archetypal captain’s innings – 135 from 399 balls with 17 fours. After adding 159 with Charlie Thurston on the third day, on the fourth, the skipper added an unbroken 200 in 83 overs with Procter, who reached 112 not out, to steer his side to 507 for 6, their record total against Warwickshire.The superb rearguard action left a young Northamptonshire side proud and delighted, but there were the opposite feelings in the home dressing-room. After completely dominating the first two days, Warwickshire let victory slip through their fingers, literally with several dropped catches, while the bowling attack failed to deal with the loss of spearhead Olly Stone.The absence of Stone, who was off the field having a side injury assessed, was a big blow but did not excuse the lack of potency and control from too many other members of the attack.Northamptonshire still had plenty to do to reach safety in the match when they resumed on the final morning on 317 for 6, but Procter set down an immediate marker for the day with successive fours off Tim Bresnan.On a pitch which offered the seamers less and less assistance as the match lengthened, very few balls did not locate the middle of the bat. Rossington reached his seventh first-class century from 227 balls with his 14th four, punched straight off Ryan Sidebottom before, in the next over, Procter posted his 50 from 91 balls with eight fours.The pair added 98 in the morning, then in the afternoon Rossington dropped anchor deeper than ever. The captain scored just 15 runs in the session, settling for largely strokeless resistance and challenging the home side to find the potency to dislodge him, which they failed to do.Procter completed his fourth first-class century with his 17th boundary, cut off Rob Yates, in the first over after tea. That Yates, having never before purveyed his off-spin in first-class cricket, was into his 14th over said everything about Warwickshire’s bowling performance. They will hope to welcome Liam Norwell and Henry Brookes back into the attack for the match away to Gloucestershire starting next Saturday.

30 overs a sideA counterattacking 59-ball 81 from Manish Pandey helped India A to an unassailable three-nil lead over South Africa A, as they ran down a target of 208 with four wickets and 13 balls remaining. The match in Thiruvananthapuram was reduced to 30 overs, and the hosts were tottering at 26 for 3, having lost Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ricky Bhui and allrounder Krunal Pandya within seven overs when Pandey joined Ishan Kishan in the middle. The duo not only brought respectability to the chase but also kept abreast of the required run rate, adding 70 in just 49 balls before the wicketkeeper fell to the left-arm spin of George Linde for 40.Next man in Nitish Rana departed for a run-a-ball 13, leaving Pandey, who had gone past fifty by then, in the company of left-hander, Shivam Dube. Dube didn’t disappoint as he got going immediately, clearing the ropes off just his eighth delivery. Though Pandey fell to the left-arm spin of Bjorn Fortuin – for the only fifty of the match – with 34 still required, by this time the equation was just over a manageable run-a-ball. But Dube knocked off the target with plenty to spare, finishing unbeaten on 45 off 28.The visitors had relied on a series of small contributions from their top and middle order to set a challenging target. There were no fifties as Heinrich Klaasen top scored with a 21-ball 44 that included four hits over the fence and two fours. Opener Janneman Malan and No. 3 Matthew Breetzke were guilty of squandering starts but at least each of their thirties came at faster than a run-a-ball. For India A, pacer Deepak Chahar and Krunal, with his left-arm spin, picked up two wickets apiece, but Krunal was by far the most effective bowler in the match, having gone at under five an over.The fourth unofficial ODI will be played in two days time at the same venue.

Alex Hales has said he wants to put the “mistakes of the past” behind him, and issued an apology to his Nottinghamshire team-mates following his 21-day ban for recreational drug use.Hales was deselected from England’s World Cup squad as a result of the ban, with captain Eoin Morgan citing a “complete breakdown of trust” for his omission from the final 15-man squad.But speaking as part of Nottinghamshire’s video preview for their upcoming T20 campaign, Hales revealed that he had apologised to his county team-mates and admitted that he had let them down.”As soon as I walked back into the changing room, around the guys, I couldn’t have asked for more,” he said. “Everyone has been unbelievable. I just wanted to apologise to them, for everything that happened.”I got the point across that I had not just let myself down, I’d let down family, friends, team-mates – so I had to get that off my chest, I had to tell the guys how I was feeling.”I wanted to let them know I was 100 percent focused on the cricket now, [that] I wanted to move forward and put those mistakes of the past behind me.”Nottinghamshire have stuck by Hales publicly throughout the incident.After the news broke, the club issued a statement which said it was “in the best interests of all concerned for him to get back to playing cricket for Nottinghamshire as quickly as possible”, despite his actions falling “way short of the behaviours the club expects from any of its staff”.At the Caribbean Premier League draft in May, Hales twice declined to comment when asked about his deselection, and his only public comment had been via a statement from his management company which said that he was “devastated”.But Hales did admit he had his sights set on an England recall in time for the T20 World Cup in Australia in 2020, and has retained his central contract which runs until the end of the summer.”It’s how it has to be, to be honest,” he said. “I can’t change what’s happened – all I can affect is what’s going to happen. I’m just trying to look at it in as much of a positive way as I can, just have to crack on and try to make the most of hopefully a few more years in my career.”They [Notts] asked me if I was ready to play, and I just couldn’t wait to get back out there to be honest, that’s all I want to do, is play cricket.”Hales was picked for Nottinghamshire’s final group game and their semi-final defeat in the Royal London Cup, scoring 36 and 54, and will open the batting in their Vitality Blast campaign which starts next Thursday.Nottinghamshire’s progress in that competition – and they are favourites with the bookies to regain the crown they won in 2017 – will determine Hales’ participation in the CPL, where Barbados Tridents chose him with the first pick of the draft.Following that, he has expressed interest in playing in the Big Bash, and has a year to run on his contract with Rangpur Riders in the Bangladesh Premier League, though will hope to be involved in some of England’s white-ball internationals this winter (3 ODIs and 3 T20Is in South Africa, and 5 T20Is in New Zealand).

Australia opener Nicole Bolton has spoken about her battle with mental health following her return to action after a five-month break and said if it hadn’t been for stepping away from the game she may have been forced to retire.When Bolton started her indefinite break in the middle of the fourth edition of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) in January, citing personal reasons, an air of concern hung over her withdrawal. It wasn’t, after all, a drop in form that had triggered the decision; she had just smashed a fifty for the Scorchers against Sydney Thunder and picked up 2 for 26. However, that Player-of-the-Match performance also brought the curtain down on Bolton’s season.More than five months on from the start of that hiatus from competitive cricket – she was unavailable for selection for the three-match home ODI series against New Zealand in February – which ended with a recall to Australia’s Ashes squad, Bolton revealed that her pull-out had been down to “alarm bells” around her mental well-being that nearly forced her to consider retirement.ALSO READ: Nicole Bolton relieved after bouncing back from first-baller ahead of Ashes“Personally a few things happened to me away from cricket which was a bit of a challenge in itself,” Bolton told . “There is still a lot of stigma around mental health, depression and anxiety. I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you if I didn’t take a break. I potentially would have retired to be honest.””It was what people couldn’t see behind closed doors where I was really struggling. Physically my body started to fail me in a sense. It was like alarm bells because I was like ‘this isn’t normal’.”A battle that has been faced by some of Bolton’s top-flight competitors such as England’s Sarah Taylor and Kate Cross, posed her a similar challenge: to speak up. And Bolton admitted she “wasn’t completely honest” with the Perth Scorchers team doctor, to whom she had only described symptoms of potential burnout.”I was almost covering up how I was really feeling,” Bolton said. “I didn’t want to rush it. It was something I knew that if I was going to take the time off, I had to do it properly. If that meant never coming back to play for Australia, then that’s what it meant.”During her time away from the game, Bolton found a confidant in the Australia and New South Wales men’s allrounder Moises Henriques, who had taken leave from the Big Bash League in late-December 2017 due to mental-health reasons.”He doesn’t know the role that he’s played, but it’s unbelievable really,” Bolton said of Henriques, who would try to lift her with words of encouragement on WhatsApp.Nicole Bolton gets set to play a sweep•Getty Images

At the time, Bolton’s decision to step away from the game was met with support by her club and national team-mates, including the likes of Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry.”You speak to anyone around the country in women’s cricket and she would have had an impact on them in some way or another,” Perry, the Sydney Sixers captain had said. “She’s a great mate of mine and I know she’s got a huge amount of support from everyone. She won’t be a stranger, that’s for sure.”Bolton’s Scorchers and Australia captain, Lanning, echoed Perry. “It’s a family at the Scorchers and we’re right behind her,” Lanning said. “She knows that so hopefully she can get into a good spot and we’ll see what happens from there.”The support from her colleagues has been palpable since her return to the Australia squad for the multi-format seven-match Ashes, which starts next month and will kick off a busy international season that includes a tour of Sri Lanka in September, a tri-series involving England and India in January next year, leading up to the home T20 World Cup in February-March. There’s also the first standalone WBBL, running from October to December, on the domestic calendar.”Coming back into the squad, they were just rapt and even the staff were pumped,” Bolton said. “I never once felt alone, I knew I had the support I just needed a bit of help to get there. To be picked to play for Australia again I think is a massive achievement.”You get so caught up in the pressure and expectations and it can just grind away at you. Now I feel like I’ve got other things going on in my life that if cricket is not going well, well it’s okay. In time, I hope I can share my experience and maybe help someone else. It was an important time in my life and I’m glad I’ve been able to come through it.”

India are the last team to start their World Cup 2019 campaign, opening against South Africa on Wednesday, with every other team having played at least one game in the past week. Captain Virat Kohli felt starting late gave his side an advantage in sussing out conditions and strategies. Speaking on the eve of the match, he also welcomed the expectations people had of him, and how he has learned to go along with them.On being the last team to start their World Cup campaign
It is a bit of an advantage, I have to say, in terms of understanding how the games have gone, what the conditions have to offer, what the overcast conditions bring into play when the sun is out. It’s a totally different ball game altogether, what the conditions are at 10.30 in the morning compared to the afternoon. I think from that point of view, we have a lot to absorb. We have a lot to learn from looking at how the other teams play.From that point of view, we would say that we have a lot of positives that we can take out of starting after everyone else.On Kedar Jadhav’s fitness
Kedar is doing well, he is back to full fitness. Kedar is batting in the nets now, he is hitting the ball well, so it is always nice to have him back in the mix because of the variety he brings into the side.On whether there is pressure of scoring a century in the opening match, having done so in 2011 and 2015
When you perform for a long time, expectations are always there. I understand how to go along with the expectations rather than saying I’m not. You don’t go out there to prove anything to anyone, which is a fact, but you have to accept that expectations are going to be there.When I walk out to bat, come down the stairs, people will say “we need a hundred” and all those kind of things will happen. So, for me, that’s just a part of the process. It’s not something that I don’t want to hear, or something that I think people should not tell me because when you do well, people obviously want to see you do well again and again because they want to see the team win.So my focus is if I’m in a position to be able to do that again, but more importantly, make the team win. And if it takes a hundred runs, 150, 50, 60, 70, 40, whatever it is, I’m ready to do that and that’s the frame of mind I’m going to be in.On the 10.30am start time, and how it affects team combinations
If the conditions offer you a lot in terms of the pitch.. we know it’s a different situation in England when there is a cloud cover and when there is sun out. With two new balls, if the pitch has something to offer, then an extra seamer comes into play big time.But even on a good pitch, on a batting-friendly pitch with two new balls, I foresee the first 10 overs to be challenging if there is cloud cover. Because we are playing in England and the ball does a bit more than any other place in the world.From bowling point of view, even if you play with two spinners, two seamers or three seamers, they are going to be in the game in the first half if you start at 10.30. The dynamics will change from morning to afternoon big time, and the bowlers will have to adapt very quickly.On Kuldeep Yadav’s weak IPL 2019 form
I have had great IPL seasons and I have entered playing for the country and I have felt like, “I feel like I’m going to dominate this tournament so much” – and you can’t put bat to ball.So every tournament, every game that you play has no connection to what you have done in the past. You can only take out the positives and the learnings and take it to the next tournament or game that you play. Whether you have done well in the IPL or you haven’t, you still have to work hard. And to me, IPL has no connection to the World Cup.He’s a guy who has done so well in the last two years. I don’t think three or four games of a T20 tournament will do anything to harm his confidence.We know when he pitches the ball in the right areas the batsman has to make better decisions or you are walking out. And he’s back to bowling at his best. In the nets he is bowling well, attacking the stumps, his variations are spot on, he is pitching the ball in the right area. So I see batsmen having to take better decisions against Kuldeep rather than the other way around.

Sri Lanka’s less-heralded players helped ease through the side’s first test in the UK, as they beat Scotland by 35 runs via the DLS method.Opener Avishka Fernando, who had had a poor tour of South Africa earlier this year, produced 74 off 78 balls, while Dimuth Karunaratne, on ODI captaincy debut, made 77 off 88. The pair put on 123 runs for the first wicket. Kusal Mendis also contributed 66 off 56 balls through the middle overs, but it was bowler Nuwan Pradeep who impressed most of all, taking 4 for 34 in the rain-shortened second innings.For Karunaratne, the match was not only a test of his leadership, but also an examination of his batting. Having not played ODIs since the 2015 World Cup, there have been doubts over whether he could score quickly enough in this format. He was dropped twice before eventually being caught at long-on, but in making a half-century, and providing the middle order with a good platform, Karunaratne suggested he was not completely out of place in ODIs.”Playing an international one-dayer after such a long time is not easy,” Karunaratne said afterwards. “I was under pressure early on and was struggling a little bit. But once I got set and thought about how to play – which bowlers I should target – I felt better. Fortunately, I got a couple of chances. But thanks to the runs I got, I got some confidence.”Avishka was excellent as well. We know how capable he is. He can hit hard and rotate the strike as well. We talked to him about what we needed from him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get a hundred, but I think he can get a big hundred in the World Cup.”Sri Lanka made 322 for 8 in their 50 overs, but had seemed set for a score of over 350 at one point, before they experienced a serious middle-overs stutter. Having been 203 for 1 at the end of the 33rd over, Sri Lanka mustered only 19 more runs in the next seven overs, as they lost three quick wickets. While that slowdown was not ideal, it was important that Mendis and Lahiru Thirimanne stabilise the innings at that stage, Karunaratne said. Sri Lanka later made 99 runs in the final ten overs.”We planned to bat out 50 overs, so when we were struggling in the 33rd over – we had lost a couple of wickets, in Angelo Mathews and Thisara Perera – we were trying to make sure we batted long. Kusal Mendis was playing well, and Lahiru Thirimanne went in and did a good job. When you have wickets in hand, you can go for it at the end. We were struggling through that period, but we rotated the strike, and in the last ten overs we went for our big shots.”Although they had a substantial score to defend, the arrival of rain partway through Scotland’s innings had complicated the task of Sri Lanka’s bowlers, who were visibly struggling to grip the ball. Pradeep, though, was able to maintain excellent control, and was rewarded with the Player of the Match award for his returns.”When Scotland were going quite well, I spoke to Nuwan Pradeep and asked him to try a couple of bouncers,” Karunaratne said. “He did that really well and we were able to squeeze them through that middle period. It’s not easy to bowl yorkers, especially with the ball getting wet because of the rain. If you don’t execute it well it will go for a six. But Pradeep knows how he has to bowl, and he went for the straight yorker. I hope he takes that confidence into the World Cup.”

A slice of luck – a dropped catch to be exact – could well have saved, and extended, Rahul Dravid’s career, the man himself reckoned at the launch of ESPNcricinfo’s Superstats, a set of new-age metrics for a more nuanced understanding of the modern game.Dravid spoke about how a top-edge off Stuart Broad fell in no-man’s land in the Mohali Test of England’s tour of India in 2008, and allowed him to score a career-saving hundred, leading to a “couple of good years (in international cricket)” thereafter.Dravid was on 1 when the chance was missed, and went on to make 136. ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball commentary wondered if “that’s a bit of luck for Dravid”, something Luck Index – one of three elements that make up Superstats, Smart Stats and Forecaster being the others – attempts to quantify for T20 cricket.Dravid was part of a panel that also featured Sanjay Manjrekar and ESPNcricinfo’s editor-in-chief Sambit Bal, along with Dr Raghunathan Rengaswamy of IIT Madras, whose team collaborated with ESPNcricinfo’s team of statisticians to develop Superstats. The new stats language, available for T20 cricket to start with, has been derived by putting our rich ball-by-ball data through complex algorithms developed by Gyan Data, an IIT-M incubated company founded by Raghunathan.In the words of ESPN India head Ramesh Kumar, these Superstats “offer a final point of view to settle water-cooler debates and discussions on cricket” and “will validate cricketing wisdom”.Bal said that while traditional numbers would continue to be around, Superstats added a “layer of quality and value to them”, and explained how it would mean “batsmen and bowlers are equalised” and measurable on a common metric that gauges their impact in a match.The panel discussion at the launch of ESPNcricinfo’s Superstats in Mumbai – [L to R] Raunak Kapoor, Sambit Bal, Rahul Dravid, Sanjay Manjrekar and Dr Raghunathan Rengaswamy•Annesha Ghosh/ESPNcricinfo

Manjrekar, a well-travelled broadcaster, spoke about how such enhanced statistics would benefit commentators and fans watching live telecasts, especially in T20 tournaments like the IPL, which is followed by scores of data-savvy fans who are “fascinated by numbers”, than those who have grown up watching the longer formats.Should these metrics have been available during his playing career, Manjrekar argued that “an Ajay Jadeja might have won Man of the Match in the 1996 World Cup quarterfinal” against Pakistan in Bengaluru, for the impact his innings had on the game’s result, and not Navjot Singh Sidhu, who ended up getting the award.When asked if insights of the sort had helped him make informed decisions in his playing and coaching career, Dravid mentioned acquiring the services of Brad Hodge for Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 auction despite his middling returns in past editions of the tournament with other teams.Royals, “pretty much a budget team at that stage”, went with Hodge to fill a middle-order spot despite the fact that on pitches such as in Jaipur – the Royals’ home ground – his “averages weren’t good, numbers weren’t great”. Dravid and Co picked Hodge as a death-overs finisher based on his compelling past record against pace bowling. His past failures were attributed to “playing in spin-friendly tracks in Kolkata and Kochi, falling often to left-arm spinners”.Hodge, who put in a few match-winning performances in that role, had reportedly insisted that he bat at No. 3, only to be told by Dravid that “I don’t want your 450 runs at three, give me 200 runs at strike rate 160 facing the Mitchell Johnsons and Dale Steyns”.Dravid spoke about how the conversation around T20 cricket based on conventional metrics “sometimes frustrated me as a player and a coach”, and how it was “fantastic to see people have finally recognised over the past few years” that the T20 game was a different beast.Dravid and Manjrekar agreed that, with Superstats and other new-age metrics around, the critical thing was to “make the best use of these numbers” and arrive at meaningful conclusions.The two former India batsmen did, however, debate at length about whether “geeks and nerds are taking over the game”, observing that while the likes of MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli would no doubt be better captains with such insights, there was “an emotional element to cricket, a human element to it”, which can never fully be explained by numbers.Dravid argued that cricket would “never fully be taken over by the geeks, because while the numbers might tell you ‘bowl X on that day’, the captain knows better if he’s up for it, because numbers can’t quantify whether he’s carrying a niggle. As a coach, sometimes if captains take a gut call on the field, you tend to back them, as long as you know he’s not doing it blindly. I think a guy like Dhoni gets the feel of that (the game), better than most captains”.

An error in ball-tracking projection came into the spotlight as Aaron Finch was given out lbw off Kuldeep Yadav during the third ODI between India and Australia in Ranchi.When the left-arm wristspinner got his stock ball to straighten and catch Finch on the back foot in the 32nd over, C Shamshuddin, the on-field umpire, ruled the batsman out lbw. Finch called for a review, which suggested that the ball had pitched on leg stump, when it had actually bounced on middle stump.While the ball might have still gone onto hit the stumps even if it had pitched on leg stump, it was a glaring error on the part of the ball-tracking technology being used.Finch struck 93 off 99 balls – his first fifty-plus score in 22 innings in white-ball cricket since his record-breaking 172 in the Harare T20I – before he was given out lbw to end a 193-run opening-wicket stand.

A five-wicket haul from Mitchell Starc set up a 319-run first-innings lead for Australia, before Usman Khawaja’s flowing second-innings ton set Sri Lanka 516 for victory – the hosts ending the day 10 wickets away from a 2-0 series win.Both Australia’s stars on the third day were short of confidence after tough summers, and a depleted Sri Lanka were a perfect side to rebound against. Starc routinely breached speeds of 150kph to deliver perhaps the most fearsome spells of the series so far, to claim his first five-for since March last year.Khawaja, meanwhile, had hit only one fifty in his 10 most-recent innings, and had to battle through a tough period against Dilruwan Perera, before finding his feet after tea. Captain Tim Paine seemed to have delayed the declaration specifically to allow Khawaja to reach triple figures, which he did off the 134th ball he faced. This meant that Australia only had six overs at the Sri Lanka openers before the light deteriorated, however. Dimuth Karunaratne and Lahiru Thirimanne survived unscathed.Despite that, it was a thoroughly woeful day for Sri Lanka, in a tour that has been awful on various fronts. Either side of lunch, they lost 6 wickets for 45 – Starc precipitating that collapse by claiming two wickets in one over, before completing it by blasting out the tail. More worrying even than the batting slump was the blow to Kusal Perera early in the day. Hit flush on the side of the helmet by a Jhye Richardson bouncer, Perera left the field a little unsteady in the next over. According to Sri Lanka’s manager, he suffered a mild concussion. He didn’t take the field for the remainder of the day, but they are hopeful he may be in a state to bat on day four.It had been the injury to Kusal that had unsettled Sri Lanka. Early in the day, Kusal and Dhananjaya de Silva – the overnight batsmen – had made bright starts as Australia’s bowlers largely pitched the ball up, looking for swing. With no movement on offer, Australia began to bowl more short deliveries, and it was then that Sri Lanka ran into trouble. Kusal essentially ducked into that bouncer Richardson, the force of the blow near the right ear causing one part of his helmet to disintegrate, and another part to fly off.Dimuth, who had been struck in the neck the previous evening and had been cleared to bat by doctors overnight, could add only 13 runs to his score before he was out sending a catch off Starc to gully. Earlier in that same over, de Silva had attempted to hook a Starc bouncer, and ended up knocking off his own off bail, unable to control the swing of his bat.Spinners Nathan Lyon and Marnus Labuschagne then removed Chamika Karunaratne and Niroshan Dickwella respectively – the former going for a duck on debut, and the latter being given somewhat controversially, after the third umpire failed to overturn an lbw in which Dickwella had appeared to glove the ball before it struck pad. But by this stage, Australia had already made the vital blows and were all over Sri Lanka, who were clearly rattled.Soon after lunch, Starc dismissed Dilruwan and Vishwa Fernando in the space of three balls to wipe out the Sri Lanka tail – Australia declining to enforce the follow-on as expected, because their bowlers had already delivered 68.3 overs in the first innings.Sri Lanka’s seamers did impress with the new ball, having Australia 3 for 37 at one stage – Kusal Mendis taking two more excellent catches at second slip – but as in the first innings, they were virtually toothless when the ball lost its shine. Khawaja was tense early in his innings, particularly against Dilruwan, who has a history of getting him out. But having survived until tea on 25, he blossomed in the third session, hitting beautifully through the covers, as well as through point and square leg, whenever Sri Lanka pitched short. He hit 14 fours in his 101 off 136 deliveries, and in the process, put on a 159-run stand with Travis Head, who made a half-century to go with his 161 in the first innings.Paine eventually declared after Khawaja had got to his hundred (it’s worth remembering that Paine had denied himself a half-century by declaring when he was on 45 in the first-dig), and his quicks, though menacing, could not break through before the umpires deemed the light unfit for play. Dimuth and Lahiru Thirimanne both ended the day on 8 not out.