Righto, time for play. Mitchell Starc has the ball in hand. The pitch is baked hard and white but scattered with cracks. Pathum Nissanka will be on strike for the first ball.

Lovely scenes in a sun soaked but breezy Galle as Sri Lanka’s players, a bunch of local school children and fellow players from Dimuth Karunaratne’s side – Sinhalese Sports Club – make a guard of honour for him as he takes the field and heads to the crease in his hundredth and final Test match. The Aussies get involved too.

Sri Lanka leaving out Jeffrey Vandersay seems a harsh call after he made a plucky maiden fifty and bowled well in the last Test. Ramesh Mendis has been in fine fettle in Sri Lankan domestic cricket with bat and ball, he has 69 Test wickets from his fifteen Test matches so far, he might offer a bit more penetration with his off breaks on this surface. He’ll be hoping he has a day or two before he even has to turn his arm over.

Confirmed Teams:

Sri Lanka Dimuth Karunaratne, Pathum Nissanka, Dinesh Chandimal, Angelo Mathews, Kamindu Mendis, Dhanajaya de Silva (capt), Kusal Mendis (wk), Ramesh Mendis, Prabath Jayasuriya, Nishan Peiris, Lahiru Kumara

Australia Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (capt), Josh Inglis, Alex Carey (wk), Beau Webster, Cooper Connolly, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Matthew Kuhnemann

The first ball is about fifteen minutes away, are we going to see some raging turn from the off? Gett your spinning loins girded I reckon.

Sri Lanka win the toss and will bat first

Cooper Connolly will make his Test debut and has been handed his first baggy green cap by Simon Katich as Australia select a fifth red-ball debutant of the summer. Todd Murphy is the player to make way from the XI that was so dominant in the opening Test.

Connolly is an exciting middle-order batter and was the third leading run-scorer in the recent BBL season, but it is his left-arm spin that was likely key to the selection in Galle. The 21-year-old is yet to take a wicket in four first-class matches or as many white-ball internationals, but will be out to change all of that in the second Test.

Geoff Lemon has prepared a scene setter for your delectation:

So the second Test depends on Sri Lanka showing up this time and it also depends on what the ground staff deliver. At a guess that is more likely to be a pitch that spins from day one, given the new track already looked ready to play on four days out from the start. It’s not that Sri Lanka showed any aptitude against Australia’s spin, but at least a severely turning track would level out any advantage from the toss. Australia have prepared for those conditions too and, with the run-fest banked, it would be much more entertaining and instructive to see how they combat difficulty.

Preamble

James Wallace