Sri Lanka vs Australia: All set for a thrilling finish

Rangana Herath celebrates after castling David Warner on Friday. (Photo: AP)

Spinners accounted for three of Australia’s top order wickets to put Sri Lanka in command of the first Test on Friday as the tourists, chasing 268 to win, reached 83/3 when bad light forced an early end to the fourth day.

Rangana Herath got the first breakthrough by bowling opener David Warner for one with the total on two. Warner was dismissed without scoring in the first innings.

Dilruwan Perera had Usman Khawaja lbw for 18 and Lakshan Sandakan bowled out Joe Burns for 29 with a sharp turner to put Australia in trouble at 63/3.

Captain Steve Smith — 26 not out — and Adam Voges (unbeaten on nine) then weathered a tough spell as the scoring rate dropped.

Voges, top scorer for Australia in the first innings with 47, successfully reviewed an lbw decision by English umpire Richard Kettleborough when he was yet to score.

Australia faces a challenging task of scoring 185 more runs with seven wickets in hand on a Pallekele pitch offering help for spin bowlers. However they can seek inspiration from Pakistan’s chase of 377 to win a Test on this ground against Sri Lanka last year.

But Australia’s batting coach Stuart Law said his team is confident of a win.

“We are still confident. We always want to play to win and not to draw,’” Law said.

“Only one ball has so far spun so sharply to get rid of Joe Burns. The rest have been ok and our boys have batted well using their feet.”

“History says that teams have chased big totals before. This one (the pitch) doesn’t look like deteriorating a great deal,” he said.

Sri Lanka will be looking for only their second win against Australia on Saturday with their sole win coming in 1999 under Sanath Jayasuriya. The two countries have played 26 tests so far with Australia winning 17 of them.

“Think we’ve fought really hard to get ourselves into a situation when we can win this test match. Pleasingly, a few balls started to turn quite sharply before the players came off for bad light,” Sri Lanka coach Graham Ford said.

Bad weather could also prevent a result in the match with more than four sessions already lost. Scoreboard Sri Lanka (1st innings): 117 Australia (1st innings): 223 Sri Lanka (2nd innings, o/n 282/6): K. Perera lbw b Starc 4, K. Silva lbw b O'Keefe 7, D. Karunaratne lbw b Starc 0, K. Mendis c Nevill b Starc 176, A. Mathews c Burns b Lyon 9, D. Chandimal lbw b Marsh 42, D. de Silva c Khawaja b Lyon 36, D. Perera lbw b Hazlewoood 12, R. Herath c sub. Henriques b Hazlewood 35, L. Sandakan c Starc 9, N. Pradeep (not out) 10. Extras: (1b, 12lb) 13. Total: (in 93.4 overs) 353. FoW: 1-6, 2-6, 3-45, 4-86, 5-203, 6-274, 7-290, 8-314, 9-323. Bowling: Starc 19-4-84-4, Hazlewood 18.4-3-59-2, O' Keefe 16.2-3-42-1, Lyon 27-2-108-2, Warner 1-0-10-0, Voges 1.4-0-3-0, Marsh 9-1-33-1, Steve Smith 1-0-1-0. Australia (2nd innings): J. Burns b Sandakan 29, D. Warner b Herath 1, U. Khawaja lbw b D. Perera 18, S. Smith (batting) 26, A. Voges (batting) 9. Total: (for 3 wkts, in 27 overs) 83. FoW: 1-2, 2-33, 3-63. Bowling: Pradeep 3-0-16-0, Herath 10-1-35-1, Perera 9-1-19-1, Sandakan 5-1-13-1.