Daily Times

PALLEKELE: Sri Lanka needed someone to stand firm on the third day in Pallekele. Kusal Mendis not only stood firm, he pushed back hard against the Australians and single-handedly kept Sri Lanka alive in the Test. So solo was his performance that he even stood some chance of breaking the oldest record in cricket, the highest percentage of runs scored by a batsman in a completed innings.

Of course, plenty of action was yet to play out, but at lunch, Mendis had 86 of Sri Lanka’s 116 for 4, or 71.4% of their total – the all-time record remains the 67.3% of Australia’s total scored by Charles Bannerman in Test match No.1, in 1877. Mendis was alongside Dinesh Chandimal, who was on 7, and Sri Lanka had moved to a lead of 30 runs.

Apart from Mendis, who scored the first half-century of the Test, nobody in this match has found batting easy, so if Sri Lanka could set Australia a target of 150-plus, they could very much believe that they have a realistic chance of winning. For that to happen, Mendis would need support over the next couple of hours, and so far, no other Sri Lankan had even reached double figures.

Sri Lanka began the morning on 6 for 1, and lost a wicket in the first over of the day when Dimuth Karunaratne was lbw to Mitchell Starc for a duck. Ten overs later, Kaushal Silva was also declared lbw, this time to the quicker ball of left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe. Both Karunaratne and Silva used reviews, but on neither occasion did they receive satisfaction from the third umpire.

Australia were just as wasteful with their reviews, two off the bowling of O’Keefe being wittered away, while one that would have been overturned – Nathan Lyon around the wicket to Mendis on 66 – did not convince Steven Smith to ask for a second opinion. How they would have loved to have removed Mendis, who struck 13 fours during his 130-ball innings.

Mendis was strong through the leg side when sweeping or pulling the spinners, and he was also happy cutting the fast men when given width. Importantly, he did not go into his shell and attacked the Australians back on a surface that has been nowhere near as dreadful as the scorecard would have you believe.

Mendis brought up his half-century off 63 deliveries, and scored 86 of the 110 runs that Sri Lanka managed during the session, for the loss of three wickets. The final of those wickets was that of captain Angelo Mathews, who was caught at bat pad off Nathan Lyon for 9. But by lunch, the Mendis-Chandimal partnership had reached 30, and Sri Lanka were right back in the contest.