Two unfortunate dismissals in the first hour of play became the talking point of the morning session of Day 4 at the Sinhalese Cricket Stadium in Colombo.
Dimuth Karunaratne and Kaushal Silva walked out to resume Sri Lanka's second innings on Tuesday (August 16) from their overnight score of 22 for 1. With scores of 5, 0, 0, 7 and 7 for the former and 4, 7, 5, 2 and 0 for the latter in the series thus far, neither of the two were expected to cause much trouble to the visitors. Even as they notched up their respective high scores of the series in the morning, the struggle against Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Starc was evident. But it was an extremely clever stumping by Peter Nevill that paved way for Karunaratne's return to the pavilion. After being beaten by a brilliant offspin from Lyon, the left-hander casually lifted his back leg for a brief moment. Nevill, in an MS Dhoni-esque approach, waited just for the right moment to whip the bails off.
Soon after Karunaratne's departure, Silva was adjudged leg before to Lyon on 14. The batsman chose to review in an instant and survived after the replays found that the ball would have missed the stumps. While the right-hander continued to look out of sorts during his stay at the crease, it was Kusal Perera who hit some mesmerising strokes, none better than the reverse sweeps, which even left the bowler in awe.
After finding some generous runs with the shot, it eventually brought about his downfall too. In an attept to reverse sweep, the ball lobbed up to the wicketkeeper. David Warner, stationed at forward short leg,
seemed extremely convinced and persuaded his skipper to take a review after the batsman was adjudged not out.
The replays didn't present any conclusive evidence of a contact between the ball and bat, or the gloves. Evidently, the seam position of the ball didn't change either while crossing the bat. However, in a bizarre twist, and after a hard look, third umpire Richard Kettleborough decided to overturn the original decision. Not surprisingly, the hosts weren't too pleased with the call.
Kusal Mendis, who walked in at the fall of the third wicket, hit some lusty blows before being trapped leg before by Starc. The right-hander's innings, which included a boundary and two sixes, was short but the intent to attack the Australian bowlers from the start was obvious. However, as it turned out, the move didn't pay rich dividends for either the batsman or the hosts.
Angelo Mathews and Silva carried forward the charge in the last 40 minutes of the first session with a bit of caution to take Sri Lanka to 109 for 4 at Lunch without any further blows. In the end, the hosts manage to add 87 runs in the morning session of the penultimate day, losing three wickets in the process and taking a lead of 85 runs.
Brief Scores: Sri Lanka 355 (Dinesh Chandimal 132, Dhananjaya de Silva 129; Mitchell Starc 5-63, Nathan Lyon 3-110) and 109 for 4 (Kaushal Silva 32*) lead Australia 379 (Shaun Marsh 130, Steve Smith, 119; Rangana Herath 6-81) by 85 runs.
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