Galle [Sri Lanka], January 29 (ANI): Australia skipper Steve Smith won the toss and elected to bat first in the first Test of the two-match series against Sri Lanka at the Galle International Stadium on Wednesday.
Right-hand batter Josh Inglis is set to make his debut in the longest format of the game as the Baggy Greens named him in the playing XI for the first match of the series. Both the teams are going with three spinners and one seaming option in their line-up for this match.
The two-match series is SL’s last ICC World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 cycle assignment. After this, it has only two home Tests against Bangladesh in 2025. In their next WTC 2025-27 cycle, Sri Lanka has a total of 12 Tests scheduled as of now, at an average of six per year.
Sri Lanka was among the teams that had a chance of making it to the WTC final had they won one of their two Tests against South Africa last year. But after not being able to do so, Sri Lanka can hope to finish behind the finalists, Australia and South Africa. For that, they will have to win the series 2-0.
“We’ll have a bat. Unsure at this stage, looks a little tacky this morning, not too sure how it’ll play, we’ll wait and see. Josh Inglis gets his opportunity, he’s been banging the door down in Shield cricket. We’ve got three spinners, Starc as the pacer and Head will open. We have to adapt accordingly and see what’s in front of us. Sri Lanka are a very good team. (On 10,000 runs) Hopefully, I can tick that off,” Smith said after winning the toss.
Sri Lanka skipper Dhananjaya de Silva said that if he had won the toss then he would have elected to bat first only.
“I wanted to bat first as well. Three spinners and one fast bowler, Angelo Mathews will bowl,” Dhananjaya de Silva said.
Teams:
Australia (Playing XI): Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith (c), Josh Inglis, Beau Webster, Alex Carey (wk), Mitchell Starc, Matthew Kuhnemann, Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy
Sri Lanka (Playing XI): Dimuth Karunaratne, Oshada Fernando, Dinesh Chandimal, Angelo Mathews, Kamindu Mendis, Dhananjaya de Silva (c), Kusal Mendis (wk), Prabath Jayasuriya, Nishan Peiris, Jeffrey Vandersay, Asitha Fernando. (ANI)
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