1st T20
Australia 168/6 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka 172/5 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka won by 5 wickets (with 0 balls remaining)
Australia's "best of the Big Bash League" took Sri Lanka to the final ball. The hosts and their three debutants fought to the finish against the visitors in front of a raucous crowd at the MCG, but a win offered Sri Lanka the chance to wrap up the series at Kardinia Park on Sunday.
The Perth Scorchers' Andrew Tye was left with six runs to defend from the final over, and one from the final ball. Chamara Kapugedara surveyed the ring field then punched the winning boundary through the covers to secure the result. His composure ensured Sri Lanka finished in the ascendant after looking the more likely victors throughout their chase, largely due to a boundary count that outstripped the hosts, 21 to 13.
None of Australia's batsmen were able to go on to substantial scores after Upul Tharanga sent them in to bat, as a spongy pitch and disciplined Sri Lankan bowling denied them the ability to find a domineering rhythm. Sri Lanka's pursuit was then given the desired fast start by Dilshan Munaweera after Tharanga was dismissed in the first over, and Asela Gunaratne's nimble half-century guided the tourists to within sight of victory in front of 42,511 spectators, many of them barracking for Sri Lanka.
Gunaratne also made a brief but notable contribution with the ball, goading the captain Aaron Finch into a skier after he had appeared the man most likely to produce a truly damaging tally for Australia. The dismissal came two balls after Finch had hammered the biggest six of the night, and 10 runs after Michael Klinger's long delayed international debut was ended.
Lasith Malinga, making his own return from a long absence, bowled tidily and scooped a couple of late wickets, while Seekkuge Prasanna gave up a mere 23 runs from four overs that featured 10 dot balls and should have been rewarded with the wicket of Travis Head - dropped badly by Tharanga at point.
Tharanga's night did not improve when he opened the batting, as he received a perfectly pitched ball going across him from Pat Cummins in the first over and offered a thin edge through to Tim Paine behind the stumps. While the Australians celebrated this wicket with some gusto, they were soon haring about the MCG outfield as Munaweera and Niroshan Dickwella went to work.
Their partnership ensured the run rate was not going to be much of an issue, compelling Finch and his bowlers to chase wickets and consequentially offer more scoring opportunities. Adam Zampa delivered his usual handy spell and deserved his two wickets, but oddly Finch did not try his other spin options until introducing Ashton Turner with only a modest equation required.
Turner's offbreaks were rewarded by a smart Paine stumping to end Gunaratne's innings just when he appeared to be coasting home, before a debatable lbw verdict against Milinda Siriwardana closed the gap between the teams. In the end, Kapugedara was left needing a single from the final delivery, an assignment he made light work of with a steely drive for four.
Klinger, Turner and Billy Stanlake were all named for their first T20 appearances for Australia but there was no room for Ben Dunk and only three specialist batsmen selected - Finch, Head and Klinger. The visitors included the left-arm wristspinner Lakshan Sandakan, who was so effective against Australia in the Test series in Sri Lanka last year.
Malinga kicked off the evening with his first ball in a full international since February last year, and also bowled the first ball faced by Klinger in an international match no fewer than 19 years after his state debut. The pitch was a little on the sluggish side, but Klinger and the acting captain Finch made a decent start with a smattering of boundaries and hustling between the wickets.
They had 76 on the board by the time Klinger tried to tug a Sandakan googly to the leg side and was pouched by Malinga via the resultant top edge. Finch had his eye on a big score as leader, but after depositing Gunaratne's first ball well into the Great Southern Stand he tried to repeat the trick two balls later against an offcutter and popped another high catch.
From there the innings was a sequence of fits and starts, as Head, Moises Henriques, Turner and James Faulkner all offered cameo contributions. However, Prasanna's spell was particularly tidy, Sri Lanka did well to keep the boundary count down - only seven fours and four sixes in total - and two wickets in successive balls for Malinga in his final over also served to aid the tourists' ultimately winning cause.
2nd T20
Australia 173 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka 176/8 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka won by 2 wickets (with 0 balls remaining)
Asela Gunaratne orchestrated a remarkable heist to seal the T20 series for Sri Lanka with a match to play, stealing an outrageous victory over Australia in the first international match ever played at Geelong's Kardinia Park. For the second time in three days, Sri Lanka reached their target from the final ball of their chase, but whereas at the MCG they had needed only 18 off the last three overs, here they needed 48. Gunaratne ensured that they did it in style.
Forty-eight off 18 balls became 36 off 12, and then came the over that turned things firmly in Sri Lanka's favour. Moises Henriques, who earlier had struck an unbeaten half-century to set Sri Lanka a target of 174, failed to find the right lengths and was plundered for three consecutive sixes by Gunaratne, as well as a four, and it left them requiring 14 from the final over, to be bowled by Andrew Tye.
Although Tye struck with the first ball - Nuwan Kulasekara caught skying a slog - the batsmen had crossed, and Gunaratne was back on strike. Full toss, four down the ground. Six over mid-off. And then, surprisingly, a single, which brought Lasith Malinga on strike needing three off two. Malinga found the single he needed, and Gunaratne crunched the match-winning four over cover, to finish unbeaten on 84 from 46 deliveries.
The Sri Lankan squad poured onto Kardinia Park to celebrate winning the series in front of a 13,647-strong crowd, a hefty percentage of which were Sri Lankan fans. Remarkably, the win meant Sri Lanka held a 5-0 record over Australia in T20s in Australia. The best Australia can now hope for is to make that 5-1 after the third match of the series at Adelaide Oval this Wednesday.
Yet for most of the chase, Australia appeared to be in control. They had Sri Lanka five down within five overs. The rain that both sides feared might affect the game had stayed away, but still it was threatening to become a damp squib. Tye had struck twice in an over, the debutant Jhye Richardson claimed a wicket with his third ball of international cricket, and Ashton Turner had got rid of Sri Lanka's captain Upul Tharanga in the very first over of the innings.
But the small boundaries meant that while Gunaratne remained, Sri Lanka were never out of the contest. He began the rebuild with a 52-run stand with Chamara Kapugedara, which ended when Kapugedara was well caught by Ben Dunk, leaping at mid-off like an AFL player taking a mark above his head. Still, Gunaratne had enough partners, though Australia's captain Aaron Finch conceded after the match that his team had done too little to keep Gunaratne off strike.
Slowly at first and then quickly at the end, he had brought Sri Lanka back into the game. Their bowlers, though, had helped by restricting Australia in the final few overs of the first innings. Australia had cruised to 2 for 111 after 13 overs, the kind of platform from which a total nearing 200 could be achieved, but Sri Lanka found a way to halt the momentum and Australia were bowled out for 173 from the last ball of the 20th over.
The runs came largely at the top of the order - nobody outside the top four reached double-figures. Henriques, whose eight T20Is have been spread fairly evenly over eight years, made an unbeaten 56; Michael Klinger, playing his first international series at the age of 36, scored a composed 43; Dunk, a regular run-basher in the BBL, completed a whirlwind cameo of 32 off 14. But as the batsmen departed, the runs slowed, and only 14 came off the final two overs for the loss of four wickets.
Malinga picked up two important late wickets, trapping both James Faulkner and Tim Paine lbw cheaply, and Nuwan Kulasekara struck three times in the final over of the innings. Australia had needed one of their established men to stick around until the end, but the innings petered out. After Sri Lanka's early stumbles, the match itself looked like petering out too. Only Gunaratne knew differently.
3rd T20I
Australia 187/6 (20/20 ov)
Sri Lanka 146 (18/20 ov)
Australia won by 41 runs
Adam Zampa's dismantling of Sri Lanka arrived too late to salvage the series for Australia, and also too late for his skiddy, accurate wristspin to be considered for the Test team to face India in Pune from Thursday.
The frequent omission of Zampa from Australia's ODI and Twenty20 sides - despite an excellent record in both formats - has been a mystery for quite some time, and there appeared to be thinly veiled frustration on the part of the bowler as he accounted for the series' pivotal player Asela Gunaratne, Chamara Kapugedara and Dasun Shanaka in quick succession to push a target of 188 beyond the reach of the visitors.
His wickets came not from any extravagant turn but instead useful changes of pace and unrelenting attack on the stumps, winning a pair of back foot lbw verdicts from the umpire Paul Wilson either side of another slider that bowled Kapugedara between bat and pad. Australia's selectors had admitted to choosing an "attacking" spinner in Mitchell Swepson over what the panel's chairman Trevor Hohns called a more "defensive" operator in Zampa.
Sri Lanka made a rapid start to their chase but a sturdy Australian effort with the bat meant that they did not have much room to lose momentum. The captain Aaron Finch and his opening partner Michael Klinger both contributed half centuries, before Ben Dunk and Travis Head provided aggressive support through the middle overs.
At 0 for 41 in the fourth over, the visitors appeared well in control of proceedings, largely due to the early pyrotechnics of Dilshan Munaweera - including 20 runs off Jhye Richardson's opening over. However, James Fulkner, Richardson and Head each coaxed outfield catches from Sri Lanka's top-order batsmen, before Zampa arrived to attack the stumps with quite compelling effect.
Those wickets meant that Gunaratne was not around to perform his third Houdini act in succession, and left Faulkner to lead the mop-up operation and the Australians to enjoy the consolation of a win in the final home international of the summer. Australia will next be glimpsed in coloured clothing at the ODI Champions Trophy in May and June.
The hosts had recalled Zampa in place of Andrew Tye for the dead rubber, banking on his spin bowling at the ground where he also plays for South Australia. Sri Lanka called in Shanaka in place of the suspended Niroshan Dickwella, leaving Kusal Mendis to take over the wicketkeeper's gloves and Munaweera to open.
Finch had a hearty slice of good fortune in the first over of the evening when he tugged Lasith Malinga to midwicket and was dropped by Munaweera. He made up for it with a series of meaty blows inside the powerplay, while Klinger took some more time to get himself moving.
The openers were parted at a healthy 79 in the ninth over, before Ben Dunk and then Travis Head offered further acceleration. At one point a tally beyond 200 looked more than plausible, but Head's exit and the run out of a steadily building Klinger left the innings to peter out somewhat in the final overs. On a good pitch it appeared an open chase, before Zampa closed the door with some panache.
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