There were no double-bounce deliveries from Sri Lanka's first ever chinaman bowler. Unlike the fictional Pradeep Mathew - he of that great Sri Lankan novel - Lakshan Sandakan didn't bowl the darter or a carrom-flick. As far as anyone can tell, there were no shady thugs watching on (save, of course, for those embedded in the nation's eminent institutions). But until the real dark clouds claimed the skies over Pallekele, a wiry young bowler with cumulonimbus hair lit up Sri Lanka's Test, and sent his team spiraling towards equilibrium - though not quite all the way.
"This is just like any other game," Rangana Herath had told him before the match. "Just do what you usually do." What Sandakan usually does, it became clear, was attempt to kiss his way through the nerves. There were two smooches of the ball before his first delivery on Tuesday evening. Many more fluttering pecks followed, between deliveries. At other times, he kissed something in his shirt, and if he thought it could help him, might have planted kisses on the non-striker's cheek on his way into the crease. But, importantly, when the wrists got warm and the legs became steady, his deliveries ceased to merely kiss the pitch; they began to really bite.
In his second over of the day, a googly ripped away from Adam Voges, who poked his bat in the other direction, and token appeals from behind the wicket were launched. Then, even when Voges divined the turn's inclination, an inside edge was induced, though it didn't lob off the pad to be caught.
The first Test wicket was a wrist-spin classic - ripping Mitchell Marsh's body to the leg side, then breaking the ball just slightly the other way. The off stump lost its bail, and Australia their promising partnership - the best of the innings, with 60 runs between Marsh and Voges.
"Mitchell Marsh is a guy who can play the anchor role," Sandakan said after play. "It's a big wicket. Dismissing him is special. I bowled a googly to the other batsman, Voges. When he got beaten I thought that I can take a wicket by mixing it up. I was able to fox Marsh and get his wicket."
Soon, this 25-year-old fresher, who hadn't played for Sri Lanka A before this month, and had been express-delivered to the Test team from England, was the most menacing bowler in the opposition for several overs. The control was far from perfect, but his excitement had the Test twitching. Stock balls started to beat the inside edge, and googlies the outside. Mitchell Starc edged one that turned away from him, and Steve O'Keefe bunted a googly to short leg. On so many recent occasions, Sri Lanka have toiled against the opposition tail, but at Pallekele a strange new spinner helped close out the innings - though he will know that less generous pitches lie in wait in his future, as well as batsmen better-versed in the shapes his fingers make.
For someone who, for now, relies on deception for his wickets, he was a little lighter on the trickery than a wrist spinner would usually be. He refused to appeal for lbws when he knew the batsman had hit it. Then, after play, when asked how many variations he has up his sleeve, he said he had four, when he could have said fourteen. "I've got the lissa, the leaper, the floater and baggage porter," he might have ventured. Left-arm wrist spinners are cricket's tiniest subset. They seem to exist in a shrouded intersection between fact and fable. Why not ham it up a little, particularly if you have collected the best ever figures on debut, bettering Chuck Fleetwood-Smith's 4 for 64 in 1935?
Sandakan has topped Sri Lanka's first-class wicket-takers' tally in two of the past three years, but the Test team has discovered him here almost by accident. He would not have been in the squad had Jeffrey Vandersay remained uninjured. He would not have played this match had Suranga Lakmal's hamstring not packed up. Sri Lanka's batting prospects are flimsy, and its fast bowlers almost as fragile as the egos of some administrators, but, in the spin stakes at least, Sri Lanka still have something resembling a production line. Vandersay awaits his Test turn, following a promising start in limited-overs cricket, and Tharindu Kaushal has been quietly refining his big offbreak in the months his doosra has hung suspended. Maybe it is on the wrists of these three spinners that the team's future will turn.
Sri Lanka's grip on this match remains tenuous. They are 80 behind, with nine second-innings wickets intact. They will hope to leave Australia with at least 150 to chase in the final innings, to give the bowler who has so far been a revelation even to his own team, a chance of springing another surprise.