Earlier this week, Dilshan, who scored 22 and 10 in the opening two matches of the series, had confirmed that he would call curtains on his worldwide career after the completion of the ongoing series against Australia.
Advertisement
Australia’s James Faulkner recorded his first ODI hat-trick but Sri Lanka, who chose to bat first, still managed to post 288 in 48.5 overs. Kusal Mendis, Dinesh Chandimal, and Angelo Mathews delivered an excellent performance. Total (in 47.2 overs) 206. Dilshan made 42 in his final innings off 65 balls including five boundaries.
He has scored 1,000 or more ODI runs in a calendar year four times since then, while also becoming the fourth Sri Lankan batsman after Sanath Jayasuriya, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene to cross 10,000 ODI runs. Thisara Perera returned with figures of 3-33.
To the delight of heaving crowd that began the day boisterous and ended it going bananas, Chandimal launched an early counter-attack against Mitchell Starc who had once again knocked over an opener in his first over. He was also a brilliant fielder and an intelligent bowler.
Australia slumped to 41-3 when Smith (30) was caught by Dilruwan Perera off Aponso.
Although they found the going increasingly hard as the pitch slowed to a crawl, Bailey and Wade found the gaps with sufficient regularity and the boundaries just often enough to tilt the match in Australia’s favour.
Australia’s decision to rest Steve Smith, the incumbent captain of the national team across formats for the remainder of the Sri Lanka tour due to a packed schedule, created a furore in the cricketing circles with former players and fans criticising the move.
Maintaining that the timing of Smith’s break is not a problem, Warner said that the 27-year-old deserves the rest after the amount of cricket he played in the recent past.
“It took a bit of convincing to get me over the line”.
“I hate missing cricket, but in the long run it will do me a world of good”, said Smith who returns home with three ODIs and two Twenty20s still to be played.
“They are always constantly putting their hand up and that shows the strength and depth we have in Australian cricket today”. I think I’ve learned a lot about the way I play, particularly white-ball cricket, from the IPL.
Advertisement
Mathews said Sri Lanka’s opening partnerships hadn’t been good since the test series, but he credited Mendis and Chandimal for rescuing the innings. But we lost three, four wickets in a couple of overs.
