On the eve of this match, Sri Lanka's captain Angelo Mathews had a pointed message for those who sought to attribute his side's series win purely to spinning pitches and Australian unfamiliarity with same. "I'm hearing that the Aussies have not played good cricket, and the wickets were poor - I mean, come on, you've got to grow up. We play on the same wicket."
Within minutes of Mathews saying these words, the touring press corps were invited by the Australian team to pay a visit to the centre of the SSC ground in Colombo for a close look at the latest tinder-dry pitch prepared for them. The clear implication was that the surface would once again do plenty for spin, and that it would struggle to last the distance. Another spoiler for the pacemen.
But events on day one of the third Test served to underline Mathews' point rather better than it did that of the touring team. Yes the SSC pitch was extremely dry, and yes it took spin from the very first ball delivered by Nathan Lyon. Yet the conditions were not exactly treacherous, offering little by way of variable bounce, and catered to batsmen prepared to play with application, skill and occasional moments of flair. In Dhananjaya de Silva and Dinesh Chandimal, Sri Lanka had those batsmen.
By way of quantifying how well these two played, Australia had arguably their best bowling day of the series. Runs were scored at a far less rapid rate, fields were clever but not over-attacking, and the pre-lunch spell when Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon combined artfully was as threatening as two Australian bowlers have looked together since Josh Hazlewood and Steve O'Keefe on day one at Pallekele. Lyon found a disconcerting pace with useful turn early on, though for the balance of the day his line was perhaps fractionally too straight, allowing plenty of balls to be worked around the corner.
"Personally I've learned a lot in this series and I'm adapting," Lyon said. "You can still see my stock off break creating chances but they just weren't carrying to bat pad. The best way I'd describe it is I'm adapting to learning how to bowl on the subcontinent."
Jon Holland too delivered a performance much improved on his nervous showing in Galle, dropping the ball onto the right length and varying his degree of turn nicely. On the evidence he offered here, Holland deserves a more consistent commission for Victoria over the home summer, and serious consideration for India next year. If a wicket or two was missing from his analysis, it was not through a lack of chances created. Peter Nevill could not accept an edge from Dhananjaya's groping blade in mid-afternoon, not long after a skier fell tantalisingly short of mid-on running back with the flight. A facile appeal for a return catch via the boot of silly point was laughed off.
What will frustrate the Australians is the fact that Sri Lanka have been by far the more resilient of the two batting orders. A morning scoreline of 26 for 5 followed earlier starts of 67 for 5, 86 for 4, 9 for 2 and 98 for 5. Australia's bowlers have not, all told, done a bad job, but their efforts to snuff out the Sri Lankan batting have been met by stiffening resistance with every innings since the first. Of course it was Kusal Mendis who showed the way with a series-defining hundred in Pallekele, but he has been followed by Mathews, Dhananjaya and Dilruwan Perera. It is a philosophy of Darren Lehmann that a batting line-up need only make enough runs to allow the bowlers room to take 20 wickets. Sri Lanka's middle-order batsmen have followed it grandly.
"I daresay if you look at the whole series that's a big key in Sri Lanka being 2-0 up in the series," Lyon said. "The ability for their batsmen to bat in partnerships and for a long period of time. We've all spoken about it and our batters have got their own plans to come out in this Test match and hopefully put them into play and bat for long periods. That's Test match cricket."
Intriguingly, Australia's selection for the Colombo Test reflected mounting discontent with the touring top order, even though Sri Lanka's first three batsmen have been, if anything, even less productive. Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja paid a heavy price for their failures in Tests one and two, replaced by a pair of older cricketers in Moises Henriques and Shaun Marsh. These two were ostensibly the spare batsmen on tour, though Henriques is more an allrounder with precious few recent Sheffield Shield runs behind him. The methods he and Marsh offer will fascinate, given the team's commitment to a more aggressive game has now been faced with a counterpoint from Dhananjaya and Chandimal.
Lyon offered a somewhat testy response when asked about the changes. "That's a selector's question," he said. "I've got no say in it, all I've got to do is support each and every one of those guys in the change room, and I'll do that until the day I die. SOS and Mo have definitely got my support, but so do Burnsy and Uz. It's a tough call, but that's why the selectors get paid the big dollars."
Dropping two seemingly settled members of the Australian top six just two Test matches into a new season was a momentous decision given the need for all antipodean batsmen to learn as much as possible in these conditions. Both Burns and Khawaja may now doubt their chances of going to India in the new year, no matter how many runs they make in Australia during the summer.
But the move away from the current top six had as much to do with Sri Lanka's greater resilience as with Australian troubles with spinning surfaces. Make no mistake, this series has been won by the home team, not by their pitches.