Dilshan set for swansong against firing Australia

Match facts

September 9, 2016Start time 1900 local (1330 GMT)

Big Picture

To watch Australia rewrite the T20 record books on Tuesday, you’d think they were the world’s dominant team in the format. And indeed, they do boast two of the three highest T20 international totals of all time (263 for 3 this week and 248 for 6 against England in 2013) and all of the three highest individual scores (Aaron Finch 156, Glenn Maxwell 145*, and Shane Watson 124*). Yet, for all of those monster scores, Australia were booted out in the group stage of this year’s World T20 and have only once made the final of that event, when they lost to England in 2010. It is a format in which Australia are inconsistent, but, as this week has shown, at their best their firepower is awesome.

Sri Lanka, on the other hand, had won a World T20 title, back in 2014. Some links from that triumphant final remain – Kusal Perera, Thisara Perera, Sachithra Senanayake. Some have gone – Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, Rangana Herath, for example. And another is about to leave: Tillakaratne Dilshan, who played every match of that successful campaign, is set to play his final match for Sri Lanka. A batsman who has brought great joy to Sri Lanka – not least in the T20 format – Dilshan will hardly want to leave the game on a low, and Tuesday’s match was about as low as it gets in T20Is.

Form guide

(last five completed matches, most recent first)
 Australia: WLWWLSri Lanka: LLLLL

In the spotlight

And so this is it. Five weeks before his 40th birthday, Tillakaratne Dilshan bows out of international cricket. A career that …

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