Some days are just made for batting. You can feel it in the air upon arrival at the ground, seeing clearly in your mind a batsman's fluid late-afternoon strokeplay, a bowler's weary toil and a fielder's resigned chased to the boundary line.

Day two in Brisbane was one of those days, when the combination of sun and turf and match situation gave the distinct impression of a runfest to come. Big scores, maybe even centuries, were most certainly on offer.

Quite clearly, somewhere along the line, something went terribly wrong, because here we are 22 days of Test cricket into the summer and still no Australian batsman has reached triple figures.

They came close — oh boy, did they come close — but yet again a day that promised so much shrivelled and died in the oppressive heat.

Such was the sense of missed opportunity that Australia's two highest Test scores of the summer still had more than a whiff of underachievement about them. This Gabba crowd was itching for something to celebrate, but 80-odd didn't quite fit the bill.

Suranga Lakmal broke Australian hearts when he sent Travis Head on his way. ( AP: Tertius Pickard )

That's not to take away from the innings of Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head. For three hours they looked just about as comfortable as possible, taking their time through the morning session and making the most of a bedraggled Sri Lanka in the middle session.

We'd seen Head give the appearance of a proper Test player before, but it was pleasing to watch Labuschagne, clearly emboldened by home comforts, bat with confidence and conviction. He didn't need to take too many risks, so he didn't, and by the time he reached 81 his thoughts had likely already turned to the lifelong dream he was about to achieve.

Similarly, Head cruised to his 50, barring the one stroke of fortune when his post-tea edge proved just a little too sharp for Niroshan Dickwella. Most of his edges have gone to hand so far in his short Test career, so this felt like a turning point.

Head (left) and Labuschagne (right) were racing to become Australia's first centurion of the summer. ( AAP: Darren England )

But, in both cases, the stars weren't quite aligned as precisely as perhaps they appeared. Labuschagne chipped the most innocuous delivery to a close fielder who could hardly believe his luck, and Head played all around a straightening delivery that would have gone on to feather his bails.

Together they put on the largest partnership of Tim Paine's reign thus far, but instead of two breakthrough hundreds, with all the valve-releasing implications they would have carried for the home team, they were just another couple of starts.

They weren't alone. Marcus Harris grafted on the first night to earn the right to bat on the second afternoon, but one solitary cover drive was followed by just the most heartbreakingly meek nudge to point.

Kurtis Patterson's first dalliance at the level was an attractive flash of long limbs and flicked wrists, but ended before promise could become performance.

Travis Head (left) could only scream as he was adjudged LBW for 84. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

And in the end, the whole thing was wrapped up in time for Australia to have a little bowl of its own, a six-over spell that Sri Lanka probably expected to be slightly more tricky to negotiate than it proved, only for Pat Cummins to do a Pat Cummins thing with the final delivery.

He made sure the day's honours rested with the Australians, albeit without the authority that had been forecast.

Around the time of the dinner break, the optimists among us had turned their talk to aggressive declarations, calling Australia's innings voluntarily to give it an evening crack at Sri Lanka's top order. Not only were those suggestions perhaps overrating Australia's batting and underrating Suranga Lakmal's sensational bowling with the second new ball, but they missed the point of what this day was supposed to be.

Australia's batsmen need time in the middle as much as they need oxygen right now. They need to relearn the art of batting for session after session and turning that 30 into 100 into 150. And the opportunity to do just that was handed to all of them — even nightwatchman Nathan Lyon — on a silver platter.

It was slow going for Marnus Labuschagne at the start of his innings. ( AP: Tertius Pickard )

The clearest reflections of just how wasteful Australia had been with the bat were to be found in the long, ashen-faced departures of the dismissed batsmen. One by one, they skulked off the ground, perhaps with a punch of the bat or a curse under the breath. No resigned shrug that they'd copped an unplayable one, just the purest disappointment.

They knew, as we all did, this was the one that got away.