Jayasuriya: 'There was a serious problem with our shot selection'

Sri Lanka’s batters also largely fell playing attacking strokes.

“There was a serious problem with shot selections, as well as with handling situations,” Jayasuriya said. “I don’t think certain players have handled situations well. They’re experienced players, and they have to be more mature.

“These players have played a lot of cricket and should know how to play. I’ve talked to them about this. But we’ve got to talk to them in detail about this now. Also, we cannot blame the wicket. Because we saw how the wicket behaved. This was a very good wicket. For a long time, we haven’t seen such a good wicket in Galle, on the third and fourth days.”

The problem, Jayasuriya said, is batters not converting their starts into big scores. In Australia’s first innings of the first Test in Galle, six batters faced 50 balls or more. In Sri Lanka’s first innings, only Dinesh Chandimal faced more than 50 balls.

“The biggest problem is the batters who are taking a start but are not going to play a long innings,” Jayasuriya said. “This is something I always mutter. We saw [Usman] Khawaja, [Steven] Smith and [Josh] Inglis, all three of them took a good start and they converted them to big hundreds. This conversion must be there. We’re not consistent in that. Our players should know that these are our conditions and we must make use of these conditions. There were lots of opportunities but we didn’t make use of them.”

Australia’s spinners did tend to bowl faster than Sri Lanka’s, but at the time, Sri Lanka’s spinners had felt their slower pace was better suited to this surface.

“They were bowling a little faster than us, but we were thinking that our pace was the best. That’s what we’ve been doing. The wicket was on the slower side and we were trying to bowl a little faster, but we ended up bowling as we usually do here.

“After the third or fourth day, we saw the normal Galle wicket. What the Australia spinners did was bowl a little faster than us. That’s normally what they’re doing.

“We’re used to bowling at a slower pace, but it didn’t work in this match. We need to discuss all that also.”

Andrew Fidel Fernando is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo. @afidelf