“Whitewash over the No 1 Test team, one of the greatest Test series wins. proud of the boys, Congratulations #SLvAUS”, Jayasuriya, who was at SSC to savour the historis win, tweeted.
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Dilruwan Perera removed Shaun Marsh for 23 on the stroke of lunch and it was then a procession as Herath took control.
Herath soon took over from his fellow spinner to dismiss Australian skipper Steve Smith and senior batsman Adam Vogues in the same over.
Herath then ran through the Australian middle and lower order as the visitors’ batsmen had no answer to his left-arm spin. They lost each of their matches by big margins – 106 runs, 299 runs and 163 runs – for their ninth consecutive Test defeat in Asia after 4-0 in India in 2013 and 2-0 to Pakistan in the UAE in 2014. Kaushal Silva anchored the innings with a return to form 115 and the innings was well supported by Dinesh Chandimal who made 43. They had begun the home series against Australia at No. 7 with 85 points.
The teams now face off in a five-match one-day series beginning on Sunday in Colombo.
Sri Lanka’s 3-0 whitewash of Australia means that Steven Smith’s team has fallen from No 1 to third, with 108 points. “We worked very hard and actually we worked harder than the first two Tests ahead of the third Test as we were desperate to finish this 3-0”.
“He was fantastic. He was bowling off one leg”, Mathews told reporters as he singled out Herath while assessing the reasons behind Sri Lanka’s first ever clean sweep in a series against a major Test team. “He couldn’t run and he couldn’t jump”.
He only faced 227 balls and bowled just 35 overs in the Test series. Credit should go to this man.
Pace bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar was among three players brought in for the third game and justified his inclusion with a brilliant match-winning spell, taking five for 33 in the first innings.
Herath has already called quit limited-overs cricket and has hinted that retirement from Tests was not far away, but he indicated on Wednesday that he wanted to add to his tally of 332 wickets before he was done.
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“Experience counts a lot, every day we learn”, Herath said as he accepted his man of the match award. “I can’t fault our quicks, I thought they did a great job, particularly Mitchell Starc, but our batters and spinners are the ones who have to step up and we haven’t been able to do that”.
