Golden De Silva has Sri Lankans on top

Sri Lanka's knack for turning up an unsung hero when most needed in this golden series for the host nation has once again seen them wriggle off the hook to assert their authority in the third and final Test against a bewildered Australia.

Scorecard: Sri Lanka v Australia, third Test

In the series opener it was 21-year-old batting prodigy Kusal Mendis and debutant wrist spinner Lakshan Sandajan, with journeyman off-spinner Dilruwan Perera filling the bill in Galle a week ago as he batted and bowled his team to a series win.

Today, with Sri Lanka facing disaster at 5-26 against a top-ranked Test opponent bearing renewed purpose as well as a couple of fresh faces, it was Dhananjaya de Silva in his maiden Test series who stopped the heavyweights in their tracks and turned the match around with remarkable poise and purpose.

Leading his team to an unlikely 5-214 at stumps on an opening day on which they had stumbled badly and often in the opening session.

Remarkable when taking into consideration the match situation, the batting conditions that had seen all who came before him struggle for timing and fluency, the quality of the rival attack, and the fact the 24-year-old's highest score in his four previous Test innings was 37.

Which he scored in Sri Lanka's first innings at Galle when, as he did today, he batted at No.7, which had prompted some to wonder if the uncomplicated right-hander who first gained prominence as a Twenty20 batter was in the team as the last means of support in an already wobbly batting line-up.

Or for his occasional off-spin that's seen him bowl just 15 overs for the wicket of Australia's 'keeper Peter Nevill in the first two Tests.

The answer, as it was revealed in frustrating clarity for Australia's bowlers who laboured for more than two complete sessions without finding a way through Dhananjaya's solid defence and felt the lash of his deft drives and crisp back-foot strokes, is that he was clearly another secret weapon.

One that joined Sri Lanka's only remaining experienced batsman Dinesh Chandimal on the cusp of a disaster and then went about totally overshadowing his senior partner in their unbeaten sixth-wicket stand of 188.

As a day that began with such unexpected triumph deteriorated into one of those dry, dusty exercises in subcontinental futility that stretches physical fitness, mental sharpness, patience, humour and humility, nothing the Australian bowlers could muster was good enough.

They felt they had Dhananjaya when he was adjudged out to a catch at short leg that the novice immediately reviewed as he felt – correctly, as the replays revealed – it was one of the few deliveries he faced in his 240-ball innings that he clean missed.

An hour after lunch the Australians felt they had him in even more surreal circumstances, a rebound catch off the boot of Shaun Marsh at silly mid-off that ballooned back to bowler Jon Holland but their call for a review only brought about more heartburn.

When it showed the ball had clearly bounced a foot short of the fielder's foot, their embarrassment compounded by the knowledge that they had already lost both of their allocated reviews.

Apart from the half-chance that escaped Nevill when Holland snared the edge of Dhananjaya's bat (when on 73) but it speared directly into the keeper's glove webbing rather than the palm if his hand, the batter made few false moves.

Until, on 104 and with the second new ball offering Australia's sole hope of salvaging something from the last two sessions, Dhananjaya's uppish drive off Starc's fourth delivery flew hard and fast to the right hand of Shaun Marsh who was unable to complete the catch at short extra cover.

Which neatly summed up how far fortunes had swung in the space of four hours.

Australia hoped the pattern established over the past fortnight that had consigned them to one of the most humbling subcontinental series losses of many recent failed campaigns would turn with their liberated mindset and revamped personnel.

By axing a couple of specialist top-order batters (opener Joe Burns and number three Usman Khawaja) and replacing them with a batsman (Shaun Marsh) and a seam-bowling allrounder (Moises Henriques), the selectors showed they were prepared to change things up.

Quick Single: Burns, Khawaja 'unlucky' says Lehmann

An acknowledgment that the status quo was no longer an option.

But from there, the final Test took on a hauntingly similar air to those that had passed before.

The pitch, which one experienced former international player rated the driest he had seen across his vast and varied career, looked likely to dissolve into dust at any moment and carried all the hallmarks of the Galle deck that saw the second Test fail to reach the end of day three.

Steve Smith's insistence on calling 'heads' when his rival captain Angelo Mathews flipped the coin in the air saw it land tail-up for a third consecutive time.

With the Australia skipper's frustrated kick at the lush grass bordering the Test pitch an indication he felt his team's fortunes suddenly going the same way.

And then a series that would see opening batters filing for income assistance if they were being paid for their work by the hour again played host to another top-order implosion that suggested the 'day four' pitch might cough up a two-day Test.

Even though Sri Lanka's under-performing first pair Kausal Silva (aggregate for the first two Tests 18) and Dimuth Karunaratne (aggregate 12) dug in for their team's longest opening stand of the series, it only just limped past the previous best of 4.2 overs.

The host's innings was 4.4 overs old when Starc tempted Silva – perhaps feeling the early onset of fatigue after his 21-minute vigil that had failed to yield a run – to flash at a delivery angled across that landed meekly in the lap of Smith at second slip.

Sri Lanka's number three Kusal Perera (series aggregate 108) came to the crease and immediately began playing all those strokes his predecessors in the batting order have been unable to find, prompting Smith to turn to spin.

In the sixth over of the opening day of a Test, which wordlessly tells its own tale.

A move that proved shrewd when Nathan Lyon, adapting to his revised role as a new-ball bowler by pushing his off-breaks through with added vim, got one to spin sharply away from the left-hander as Perera prodded forward and Smith snared his second.

With the first ball after the drinks break that players from both sides were hanging out for given the enervating conditions on the heavily watered outfield, Starc pierced Karunaratne's defence which was about as surprising as finding Colombo hot and humid.

It was the fifth time in as many innings that Starc has knocked over the left-hander in his opening spell with the ball, a statistic that the Australian spearhead translated into universal sign language by waving all five digits of his left hand in the defeated opener's face.

But a far more decisive five-for was registered in each of the following overs when Mathews miscued a sweep off Lyon and Starc held a neat catch running and diving as he came off the rope at deep backward square leg.

And then Australia's shining light with the ball cut down Sri Lanka's brightest hope with the bat when Kusal Mendis flashed with characteristic bravado at a ball angled across him that was clutched by Smith, delighted with how his morning has suddenly turned around.

At 5-26 and with the ball less than 20 overs old, records were being scoured to find Sri Lanka's previous lowest score in a Test match on their home soil – 71 against Pakistan's new-ball double-act Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis in 1994.

But again, the ghost of Sri Lankan innings past was revisited upon Australia's bowlers who found themselves slowly plumbing depths even greater than the crater Lyon was gouging in the desiccated popping crease with his front foot.

De Silva and his vice-captain Chandimal saw their team through to lunch on a marginally less perilous 5-55.

To tea at an increasingly comfortable, if not exactly commanding 5-141.

And by stumps into a position of authority – given the delight the home team's spinners will find in the pitch and the Australians' obvious fallibility batting against them – with a total the tourists have yet to reach at four attempts in this disappointing campaign.