Australia aim to end tough tour on a high

COLOMBO: After sixty days in Sri Lanka, Australia’s cricketers have one final shift to pull — Friday’s (today) second T20 International before a sold-out crowd of more than 30,000 wildly parochial fans at Colombo’s R Premadasa Stadium.

And having taken a front seat on the rollercoaster journey that began with buoyant expectations before descending into multiple Test failures, a resurgent One-day International (ODI) campaign and a brutally comprehensive T20 performance, coach Darren Lehmann knows how this trip must end.

“When it’s a two-match (T20) series you’ve got to win both of them, so it’s important for us to finish the tour well,” Lehmann said on Thursday as his team undertook their final training session of what’s been a draining — both physically and spiritually — nine-week sojourn.

“I’m pleased with the way we played the other night (in posting a new T20 International record score of 263).

“It was a fantastic wicket, I must give the curator real credit there, it was an unbelievable wicket. One of the best I’ve seen.”

The toll this trip has taken can be assessed by Lehmann’s confirmation that the Australians have a bare minimum 12 fit players to tackle Sri Lanka tomorrow plus 13th man Aaron Finch who is restricted to drinks carrying by dint of the fractured right index finger he is nursing.

Starc was expected to be spelled from the final ODI at Pallekele last Wednesday but told the selectors he was keen to play and ended up finishing the one-dayers — as he did the Test matches — as Australia’s leading wicket-taker.

But given his workload over all three formats on this tour, during which he has sent down around 200 overs in matches and training sessions, he’s a good chance to sit out the final fixture Friday evening.

And Warner must play Friday because in the absence of Smith, Bailey and Finch who have all captained Australia in limited-overs cricket in recent years, it would be difficult to nominate a skipper should the stand-in leader need a break.

“We’ve only got 12 fit, so Wade will play,” Lehmann said today, confirming at least one change to the team that surpassed the previous T20 record set by Sri Lanka against Kenya in the initial World T20 tournament in 2007.

“The bowling attack we’ll just have a look at the wicket and sum that up.”

“We thought the side that we selected for the Test series was right, on the form and the previous matches we’d played,” Lehmann said when asked if he and his fellow selectors had their time again they might include some of the white-ball specialists for the Test matches.

“Obviously, we didn’t play as well we would have liked and some of the guys struggled with the conditions here and that’s understandable.

“That happens sometimes. Those one-day guys have come in and they’ve performed really well for us and that’s impressive.

“That’s all you can do when there’s another tour to India in February (next year), looking at the whole squad and what we take there.

“For me, we’ve got a pretty important home summer and it’s important what sort of side we have there. “So we’ll just have a look at those over the next few weeks.”