Roughly halfway through the morning session on day four in Galle, an offbreak was allowed to pitch on a good length and hit a wicket. There were 13 Test cricketers, two on-field umpires, and thousands more attending at the ground. For those couple of seconds, every single one of them were just watching as a 160-gram ball bounced once and clattered into a 71-centimetre stake.
Ordinarily, this should not happen in a Test match. Someone is charged with thrusting a wooden bat or poking a pad-covered leg in the ball's path.
But the man who was in charge of that just watched it happen, like the rest of us. Dimuth Karunaratne , playing his 189th Test innings, often one of the best players of spin in his team, Sri Lanka's most-prolific opener, and a batter expected to shield the less-experienced players, had a perfectly good wooden bat and pad-covered leg. He didn't use either.
What he did instead is wave this ball from Todd Murphy through to his off stump, like a zookeeper letting a lion through the enclosure gate to maul the pre-schoolers that have just arrived on their field trip. Karunaratne was the seventh batter to fall on a morning in which Sri Lanka were trying to save a Test. And still another batter would be out before lunch - Dinesh Chandimal falling for 31 to Nathan Lyon, the second time in the same session Chandimal was out to Lyon. Chandimal, by the way, was Sri Lanka's best batter and highest run-scorer in the game.
If the best Tests are supposed to thrill you to your core, here was one that could chill you to your extremities. Pulses remained unraced. Nails were left unchewed. Neck hairs stayed flaccid and pathetic against your skin. At no point could Australia ever seriously fear they might lose this match. At no point were they tested substantially. There really isn't a session you can point to, where you might make a case that Sri Lanka won it.
Josh Inglis, on debut, hit a hundred. Matthew Kuhnemann, in his first bowling innings in Sri Lanka, took a five-wicket haul. Usman Khawaja made his highest Test score, making 232 off 352 balls. "He looked at ease the entire time," captain Steven Smith, who was in a 266-run partnership with Khawaja, said of the opener.
"On debut, I thought he was outstanding," Smith said of Inglis, who made 102 in the only Test innings he's played.
"I think a lot of credit has got to go to the surgeon," Smith said about the doctor who fixed Kuhnemann's busted thumb, to get him ready for this Test. This was so massive a victory for Australia, even medical personnel not on tour were getting a piece of it.
It felt like at times in this Test, an Australia batter could wander over to a rock on the Galle shoreline and find a Test hundred underneath it. It felt like if an Australia spinner bumped into a coconut tree, three dismissed Sri Lanka batters would fall out and then sulk mopily back to the dressing room.
Sri Lanka, by the way, are a team that could possibly have made the World Test Championship final, as recently as December. Occasionally, they have had moments of competence, and even inspiration. In their last series in Sri Lanka, they beat New Zealand 2-0 just before New Zealand went to India and won 3-0.
But when you hit 654 for 6 declared in the first innings, you have plenty of options in a Test. And your captain can describe the rest of your Test with the enthusiasm with which a child describes a theme park ride.
"It's a lot of fun when you've got 650 on the board," Smith said. "You can kind of set some funky fields, and try and force a batter error as much as possible. And, you know, not be worried about getting hit for any boundaries."
Exactly. In fact, Smith might be understating it. Sometimes, you get so far ahead in a Test, your entire XI could not turn up for a day, and you still win.
No one blows a first-innings lead of 489, and it's difficult to really convey how far apart these teams were. Australia went to the UAE to prepare for this series. They set the practice pitches in Dubai to "dusty" and their batters practiced the shots they were expecting to have to play in Sri Lanka, while their bowlers worked out their lengths.
Sri Lanka played like they had trained to give up wickets and let runs flow. In the first session, they dropped two catches, and failed to review an lbw they'd overturned. But with the bat, Sri Lanka were especially inept.
There should have been people who stopped Australia from dominating a Test at Galle, and imposing on Sri Lanka the biggest of the Test defeats they have ever suffered in their 42-year Test history.
Ordinarily, this would not happen. But the people in charge were just watching, like the rest of us.