Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood believes that the visitors have kick-started the series in a perfect manner. Sri Lankan Team is going through a tough phase after a winless tour of England and Hazlewood believes that his team has opened up those painful scars once again.
Hazlewood, who took three wickets, played a major role in dismissing the hosts for a paltry total of 117. The Aussie pacers, Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, took advantage of the favourable conditions in the morning to dismantle the Sri Lankan top order. Spinners Nathan Lyon and Steve O’keefe then took care of the lower order.
“Anything you can get on the opposition is crucial,” Hazlewood said. “If you can get it straight up on the first morning of a Test series, and get on top of a few of their top-order batters, it does open up some scars, hopefully, for the back end of the tour on some not-so-friendly wickets for us quicks.
“We don’t know too much about these guys, we haven’t played them a lot, especially our bowlers, so we’ve worked out a few little things here and there in that innings, and we’ll look to keep on top of them with those plans throughout the whole series.”
Hazlewood said that the players who played in Sri Lanka before had told that Pallekele pitch would assist the pacers. The right-arm pacer expressed his delight after making the most of the opportunity and is looking forward to replicating it in the next innings too.
“A few of the guys who were here on the last series mentioned that if the quicks are going to get anything out of it, it’s going to be this Test, especially with the new ball,” Hazlewood said. “We made the most of that, and hopefully, we do again in the second innings. I was happy to bowl turning up today, it was a good toss to lose, see how that wicket was going to play. I thought if we bowled well, which we did, we’d get a few wickets early.
“It is [going to get harder], hopefully, we enjoyed that as much as we could. The next two wickets are probably going to suit the spinners and then Colombo could be quite flat, so it’s going to be hard work, but we’ve trained on some flat wickets in Colombo when we got here and tried a few different things here and there, so we’re as prepared as we can be. We may have to work on a few other things, and I think reverse swing will be a huge factor as well.”