Australia defeat Sri Lanka, favourites to claim June’s world Test championship final against South Africa

Matt Kuhnemann (4-63 and 16 wickets overall) was Australia’s bowler of the series, while captain Smith (272 runs, two centuries and the player-of-the-series award), Khawaja (295 runs), second-Test player of the match Alex Carey (202) and Inglis (a debut century) could be particularly proud of their tours.

Beau Webster (2-6) enhanced his reputation as a willing contributor to the team in all facets of the game, while Labuschagne was relieved to notch his highest score of the series to put a final seal on the chase. Whether that helps him keep his spot for Lord’s remains to be seen.

Lyon effectively had the last word on the series by conjuring the kind of delivery that not even the nimble Kusal could do anything about. With the field set deep, Lyon dropped his first few deliveries short, and Kusal declined to take a single.

But when he ventured a little fuller with plenty of action on the ball, Lyon extracted turn and devilish bounce, the ball leaping at Kusal’s gloves and plopping obligingly into the hands of Smith at short fine leg – the only fielder anywhere near the bat.

There was a sense of hurry to Australia’s play that suggested they were wary about the prospect of the Sri Lankans pushing the fourth innings target into tricky territory. After Kusal was out to Lyon’s freak ball, Australia submitted a couple of failed lbw reviews and also claimed a catch that replays showed had fallen short of Webster.

In trying for a run out, Smith also threw hard towards the non-striker’s end and appeared to stir up his problematic right elbow, grimacing and shaking the arm and his head for a time.

Speaking post match, Smith said he made a hard throw when he shouldn’t have, but that it still felt better than it was after the BBL, so a quick recovery is expected.

After the catch referral forced the Australians back to the middle, Smith then replaced Kuhnemann with Webster, who made the most of his chance by coaxing an ugly heave out of Kumara first ball.

Chasing 75 to win, Head and Khawaja each faced their share of demon deliveries in the first couple of overs, as some balls twisted off the surface and others snaked through straight. But they picked the right balls to attack and quickly the target was whittled down.

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With 37 to get, Head snicked Prabath Jayasuriya into Kusal’s gloves, bringing Labuschagne to the middle for one more innings on a disappointing tour. He played fluently in the circumstances, and took the opportunity to flick a ball from retiring Sri Lankan Dimuth Karunaratne through the leg side for the winning run about 15 minutes before the interval.

Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva acknowledged the Australians had completely outplayed his team. “We are very disappointed, losing at home 2-0 is disappointing, these conditions are very suitable to us,” de Silva said.

“We haven’t had opportunities to get into the games. Whether bowling or batting we haven’t done well in the first innings, we had the best of the conditions here, but 260 isn’t enough to win a Test match.

“The consistency [was the difference]. [The Australian spinners] put the ball every time in the same place, same trajectory, that’s very hard to score runs for the batsmen.”

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