Aussies mauled in Galle as Sri Lanka claim series win

With the Warne-Muralidaran Trophy in Sri Lanka's hands for the first time since it was elegantly cast, and next year's four-Test series in India suddenly looming with the appeal of a quadrennial dental check-up, Australia's skipper Steve Smith is pondering radical changes.

To personnel.

To existing skills sets.

To the very fabric of the nation's cricket methodology woven over more than a century.

After so many of his batsmen were dismissed while stuck on or lunging from the crease during Australia's embarrassing back-to-back Test losses against lowly-ranked but highly-motivated Sri Lanka, Smith was on the front foot in his post-match media conference.

Held in a room at the panoramic Galle International Stadium that had only just cleaned up from the day three media lunch, with staff left contemplating a loss of livelihood now that days four and five were rendered obsolete.

Not that Smith had much option other than to voice a call to arms.

The world's best Test team had been afforded a best-practice preparation for this three-Test series that many had viewed as a handy reconnaissance run for the real challenge against India next February and March.

But after the sort of start to the opening Test – the home team shot out for 117 in less than 35 overs – that would traditionally see such a powerful unit roll roughshod through the remainder of the series, the Australians were stopped summarily in their tracks.

The 10 Aussie wickets that handed SL a series win

By the very weapon they knew the opposition to possess – spin bowlers on dry, turning pitches.

Yet were not only rendered totally unable to disarm their foe, they gave the very real impression as this Galle Test hurtled to its inevitable conclusion that they had been sprung in some sort of ambush.

Despite only being endorsed as Australia's Test captain a year ago (in the wake of a similar batting disaster against England at Trent Bridge that unfolded 12 months earlier to the day) Smith has heard enough of the same old lines, the hackneyed excuses for failure on the subcontinent to know something must change.

And he has a few ideas as to what that might be.

As a starting point – and following the evolution of the two white-ball formats in 50-over and 20-over cricket – employing a purpose-picked Test XI selected for the conditions in which matches will be played.

Australia collapse to 106 all out in Galle

In other words, the batters they take to India for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy tour next year that will define the success of Australia's (thus far unsuccessful) subcontinent strategy and their aspirations to remain atop the Test rankings might differ from the ones they utilise on home pitches throughout the preceding summer.

A recognition that some players are more technically and temperamentally suited to playing the sorts of physically gruelling, mentally demanding innings required amid the stifling weather and atmosphere of a Test in Asia than are others who have been tried and found wanting.

How Australia's second innings unravelled

"It certainly needs to be looked at," Smith said of the notion that the seemingly revolutionary idea of the best top six batsmen for an Ashes series in England or a tour to South Africa or New Zealand not necessarily being the best bet for totally opposite conditions.

"If there are guys that can play spin well in these conditions then it's certainly got to be a chance.

"It's been too long now – it's been (17 Tests) since we've won a game in the subcontinent (at Galle in 2011), so whatever we're doing, it's not working.

"So there might be a need for some changes."

All 10 Aussie wickets as tourists take 86-run lead

Names that could be considered under that scenario are Victoria's Peter Handscomb, third-highest run scorer in last year's Sheffield Shield competition with a team that plays most of its matches on the flat MCG or the spin-conducive Alice Springs pitches.

And who is so highly thought of by the national selection panel that he was installed as captain for the current Australia A series against South Africa A in Townsville, as much for his innovative thinking as his technical competency and powers of concentration.

Quick Single: Handscomb happy to keep innovating

Likewise Western Australia's Cameron Bancroft, a self-confessed cricket tragic whose ability to 'bat big' was underscored in 2015 when he stayed unbeaten for a record 797 minutes – more than 13 hours – in scoring 211 for WA against a star-studded New South Wales line-up.

Admittedly on the not-so-friendly-to-spinners WACA Ground pitch, but defying a rival line-up that included Test spinners Nathan Lyon and Steve O'Keefe as well as national representatives Doug Bollinger, Gurinder Sandhu, Moises Henriques and Sean Abbott.

As well as Test 'keeper Peter Nevill who was thrown the ball for an over, so bereft of ideas were the Blues to prise the right-handed opener – who would also usefully fit the bill as a back-up gloveman to Nevill in any Test squad – from the crease.

Quick Single: Bancroft finds his mental edge

And maybe that strategy could extend to a player fitting the template, if not the physical person, of Glenn Maxwell or South Australia skipper Travis Head.

Someone with IPL and ODI experience on subcontinental pitches, who has the bravado to dominate the local spinners before they can apply the noose in return, and who has the confidence in attempting and executing the reverse sweep and other unconventional tools in the heat of Test battle.

Quick Single: Maxwell sees red on road to return

The sort of person who can change the momentum and rhythm of a match in the course of a session or two, as Sri Lanka's pocket dynamo Kusal Mendis did in the first Test in Kandy, but who has been so glaringly absent in an Australian outfit that has looked timid, uncertain and listless.

Mendis ton leads a Sri Lankan resurgence

But it's not only the way his team has played (or, worryingly often, failed to play) spin that Smith wants to re-examine.

It's also the means by which Australia bowls it that had the captain thinking aloud in his public post-match debrief.

The disparity between the modus operandi of Australia pair Nathan Lyon and Jon Holland (combined match figures of 6-291) versus Sri Lanka's Rangana Herath, Dilruwan Perera and Lakshan Sandakan (18-238) was even more stark on the field than in the scorebook.

Smith says a new spin on slow bowling is needed

Where the noticeably bigger Australians stood tall and came over the top of the ball in their actions to impart the sort of overspin required to get deliveries to drop in flight, and therefore trick batters on home pitches where turn is minimal, the Sri Lankans played a vastly different game.

Physically smaller and often bowling from a more crouched position, with a wider arm release that enables the ball to skid off the pitch and almost gather pace from the bare surface.

When the Australians tried the same tactic, their higher point of release meant the ball tended to stop and sit up, making it easier to counter or work into the gaps with minimal risk and then simpler to sweep when they over-corrected and tossed it up much fuller.

Pitch-perfect Perera makes Sri Lankan history

"We need to find ways to bowl differently to how we bowl our spin in Australia," Smith said a day after coach Darren Lehmann conceded the Australia spinners had been comprehensively out-bowled by the their Sri Lanka counterparts.

Quick Single: Lehmann warns that change is in the air

"You look at the Sri Lankan spinners, any of the subcontinent spinners, they bowl that side seam on the ball where they can go up and down with their speeds and trajectory.

"The ball reacts differently.

"One ball goes straight on and speeds up off the wicket, one ball spins and you don't know which one is which.

"I don't think the bowlers actually know which one is which, either.

Herath heroics too much for Australia

"In Australia, traditionally we get taught to get over the top of the ball and in Australia I think you need to get that shape to try and do the batsman in drift and shape in the air.

"Whereas, I think it's the exact opposite playing in the subcontinent.

"The (bowlers) with the side seam are extremely hard to face and our spin bowlers need to continue working on that.

"It's bowling a completely different way to the way we bowl in Australia."

Enter Sandakan: mystery spinner's stunning debut

In fairness to the tourists, they had looked to implement that as a strategy in this series by including left-arm spinner O'Keefe who had looked the most threatening of any of his team's bowlers other than spearhead Mitchell Starc before he limped off the field and out of the tour with a hamstring strain.

Quick Single: Unlucky O'Keefe hits another hurdle

Ironically, a possible case for the injury was the slight change he had made to his bowling action after arriving in Sri Lanka in the weeks prior to the first Test, where he was consciously bending his front leg to get lower in his delivery stride in order to impart that side spin and extra pace.

Which, in turn, placed additional strain on his right hamstring given the unfamiliarity of the routine.

Despite being even taller than Lyon and Holland, another left-arm spinner Ashton Agar – currently sidelined with a shoulder injury – will also likely figure in those plans given his record as the third most successful spinner in Shield cricket over the past three seasons.

As well as his value as a lower-order batter, as shown in his famous Ashes Test debut at Trent Bridge in 2013.

Lyon's milestone wicket breaks Sri Lankan resistance

The other option that Australia will doubtless explore is the inclusion of a wrist spinner, in no small part because of the essential role that Lehmann believes they play in Australia's domestic and national teams, past and present.

For that reason, and even though his first-class results over the past three years are not stunning (43 wickets from 19 matches for South Australia at an extravagant 57.02) current ODI squad member Adam Zampa might also come into calculations.

As Sri Lanka showed with their mystery left-arm wrist-spinner Sandakan who made his Test debut at Pallekele last month, the problems posed by wrist spin – even though it is not as metronomically reliable as the finger version – makes it a perennial factor in matches played on Asian pitches.

Which, as Sri Lanka's victorious Test skipper Angelo Mathews succinctly observed at match end, is where the reigning world Test champions' undeniable fallibility is harshly exposed.

"They look a bit lost when it comes to our spinners," Mathews noted.

As, it would seem, they are when it comes to their own.