A long wait ends for maybe man Lahiru Thirimanne

SAM MORSHEAD: He has been dropped from and pulled back into this squad as if the bait of an impatient fisherman, and that lack of consistency in selection can hardly have encouraged consistency in performance

Sri Lanka v England: 1st Test scorecard

Lahiru Thirimanne had to wait 2,871 days for his second Test century, and boy did it mean a lot to the Sri Lankan opener.

Just shy of eight years had passed since Thirimanne first reached three figures for his country - again at Galle, against Bangladesh - and a guttural roar, which echoed around the empty coastal venue when he cut to the backward point boundary to reach the landmark on Sunday, spoke to a very real sense of relief.

Thirimanne is a curious cricketer: a specialist batsman with 37 Test caps to his name, accumulated across the past decade, who boasts an average below 25 and just eight scores in excess of 50.

His regular inclusion in Sri Lanka’s red-ball setup - Thirimanne has played Test cricket in all bar two of the past 10 years - is down as much to his country’s relative paucity of options as it is to his own ability.

He has been dropped from and pulled back into this squad as if the bait of an impatient fisherman; those 37 Tests represent just over a third of Sri Lanka’s total number of matches since his debut, and that lack of consistency in selection can hardly have encouraged consistency in performance.

Indeed, Thirimanne was cut from the original squad for this series last March despite having not been given the chance to make a case for his inclusion in Sri Lanka’s previous outing in Zimbabwe. 

So, yes, he has not been helped by his own selectors.

^{Lahiru Thirimanne on his way to a century in Galle}

Yet 72 innings is a substantial sample size on which to judge any international batsman - unconvincing Englishmen have been tried as witches in a quarter of that time - and among that sample there is little to suggest Thirimanne is capable of what he achieved in Galle this week.

It is not only his career average, which hovered above 22 after his first-innings failure in this game, which does not inspire confidence. 

While Sri Lankan great Mahela Jayawardene insists that Thirimanne has shown plenty of staying power in domestic first-class cricket - “he’s a talented player who can bat long hours” - there is scant evidence in the elite arena.

Prior to the second innings in Galle, he had managed just 10 stays of 100 balls or more, and only two of those had come in the past five years. 

Whereas in white-ball cricket Thirimanne has made substantial contributions - most notably a match-winning century in the 2014 Asia Cup final and his side’s highest score in the World T20 semi-final victory over West Indies the same year - there is no equivalent when he’s been in whites.

Until now. 

At a time when Sri Lanka desperately needed their batsmen to display application and attrition in overturning a first-innings deficit of 268, Thirimanne stepped up.

Suppressing the natural urges for flamboyance which have often been his undoing, the 31-year-old was studious and stubborn. He was not as aggressive through the covers as is typically in his nature - 44 per cent of his runs came through the offside in this innings compared to a career average of 54 per cent - and instead swept well and waited for the bad ball.

Luckily for Thirimanne, England bowled far too many bad balls - especially in the morning session on day four when he ought to have been made to feel like he was starting from nothing once more - but as the first day’s play showed, batsmen are perfectly capable of turning rank into riches. 

Not on this occasion.

^{Thirimanne's hundred was his second in Tests}

Benefitting from England’s insistence on giving him the business-class treatment during his transition through the 90s, Thirimanne never lost his head. He shared in stands worth 101 with Kusal Perera for the first wicket, 54 with Kusal Mendis for the second, and 52 with Dinesh Chandimal for the fourth to help manoeuvre Sri Lanka ever closer to parity.

“He’s come in for huge criticism over the years,” Kumar Sangakkara said, assessing the display. 

“His position not just in the Test side but in the whole national setup has been questioned. 

“He’s batted really well, showed courage and character, but more importantly he’s shown patience.”

Only when faced with the nagging left-arm swing of Sam Curran, armed with a new ball, did he find his defences breached - late movement flirting with the inside edge of the bat and giving Jos Buttler a difficult catch low to the wicketkeeper’s right.

Thirimanne had batted for 251 balls, more than 6 per cent of the total number of deliveries he has faced across his long, staccato Test career. He had taken his team to the cusp of making England bat again, a scenario which seemed wholly out of sight when he arrived at the wicket the previous afternoon.

For a man who has spent pretty much every moment of his time in Sri Lankan whites under the dual weights of pressure and expectation, this was a timely and important retort.

All images courtesy of Sri Lanka Cricket