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A farewell party gone wrong

Tillakaratne Dilshan accepts the applause from a raucous Colombo crowd in his final international match Associated Press

The last stand

Sri Lanka has recently provided retiring greats with fond final outings. Muttiah Muralitharan got a wicket off his last ball in ODIs as well as Tests. Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene's final act together was a dismissal in which both were involved. Tillakaratne Dilshan, though, has had a less happy time. He couldn't cross fifty all series, and he finished with his lowest score in five innings at Khettarama. Slashing at a wide John Hastings ball, Dilshan sent an edge to first slip, where it was snapped up low to the ground. In Australia's innings though, he did, at least, snap up two quick wickets, at which point the stadium broke out into chants of "Dil-shan, Dil-shan."

The ball-boy killer

Australia haven't been the local ball boys' favourite touring team. In the SSC Test, a ball boy got in the way of an Australian fielder and was knocked off his feet in what could have been a nasty collision. At Khettarama, it was the ball itself that posed physical harm. Glenn Maxwell played a violent sweep to the last ball of the fifth over, bowled by Sachithra Senanayake. Two chatting kids leaning against the boundary boards suddenly spotted the ball hurtling towards their heads, and scrambled out of the way, just as it struck the metal fence above where they were sitting.

The one-man catching competition

It was Dilshan's farewell, but the athleticism this time was all David Warner's. In the sixth over of Sri Lanka's innings, he tore to his right from mid-on, tracking a high ball off Kusal Perera's bat, and dived full-length to clinch it and sent the stadium into silence. His next catch was not quite as good, but still better than any other of the evening. The Australian captain leapt low to his left at short midwicket, to intercept a miscued pull off Chamara Kapugedara's bat.

The thigh-high full toss for one

Maxwell's pre-meditated strokes have usually led to boundaries in this series, but at least once on Friday, brought him fewer runs than he should have got. In the eighth over, bowled by Dhananjaya de Silva, Maxwell set himself up for a reverse lap-scoop, turning the bat over in his hands, and preparing to send the ball over his right shoulder. De Silva, though, had bowled a rank full toss outside off, and instead of clobbering it over point as Maxwell would have done with a normal stance, he managed only to squirt it to short fine leg.