Following an action-packed morning and afternoon of Test cricket, it is Sri Lanka which seems to have taken most of the honours from the opening day of the First Test against Australia at the Asgiriya Stadium in Kandy today. At stumps, the home team finds itself at 2/69 - a score which leaves it a mere 119 runs away from Australia's modest total of 188 made earlier in proceedings. Although the loss of a vital second wicket in the shadow of stumps took some of the gloss from the performance, this was indeed a day when a rejuvenated Sri Lankan team - and principally, bowlers Chaminda Vaas, Nuwan Zoysa and Muttiah Muralitharan - confirmed the strength of its recent revival as a cricketing force.

In warm, still weather against a picturesque mountainous backdrop, Australian captain Steve Waugh's decision to bat first backfired spectacularly today as a team widely considered to be the world's premier Test cricketing force proved largely unable to conquer swing-friendly conditions and the vagaries of a pitch made to look more capricious than it ever really was in reality. In a great riposte to his axing from his nation's one-day team just over a week ago, it was Vaas (3/43) who did much of the initial damage, removing Michael Slater (0) from just the second ball of the match and continuing on to take three of the first four wickets. Zoysa (3/38) then consolidated that work, surprising the middle order with impressive cut and bounce to take two of the next three wickets to fall as his opponents plunged toward the debilitating scoreline of 7/60. And finally, Muralitharan (4/63) cleaned up a stubborn lower order with some teasing flight, bounce and turn. Other than for one of its members, Australia's upper and middle order caved in almost as quickly as a modest-sized but enthusiastic crowd rolled in to see the opening passages of play in this series.

Essentially, it was only Ricky Ponting (96) who held firm among an Australian batting line-up which again suffered from the inability of its selectors to find a consistent and reliable opening pair. In conditions which had looked almost completely inimical to strokeplay before he began to find his rhythm in the early afternoon, the Tasmanian right hander constructed an innings of great substance for his country under intense pressure. Illustrating a sense of durability and determination which is not as easily associated with his batting as the traits of aggression and impatience, he was not always in command (and played some loose shots at the commencement of his innings), but, in the circumstances, the value of his hand could hardly be questioned. By playing off the back foot against Sri Lanka's two pacemen and by intelligently using his feet to smother some prodigious turn that was hitherto being extracted by their spinners, he was able to execute some fine strokes to most parts of the ground, particularly in front of square through the off side. And such was the significance of his hand that there can be little escaping the notion that, if it had not been for his heroics and those, to a lesser extent, of Jason Gillespie (who made 41 while combining with him for an invaluable partnership of 107 for the eight wicket), the reality was that Australia would have been humiliated today.

In short, it was an astonishingly bad exhibition of batting from the visitors and it accordingly proved to be a day on which expectation gave way to the unanticipated. Nevertheless, one lingering truism remained in the mix, for it was also a day during which the consistent inability of Greg Blewett (who was chosen on this occasion, only to perish for a duck), Matthew Hayden and Matthew Elliott to prove themselves up to the task of developing into reliable opening batsmen at this level manifested itself again and perhaps even permeated the rest of the Australian upper order's game.

Late in the day, Sri Lanka's top order batsmen then seemed to be effectively consolidating the great early platform laid for them by their bowlers, only losing captain Sanath Jayasuriya (18) along the way to reaching the score of 1/69 as stumps neared. But, after surviving several late appeals against the off spin of Colin Miller, Russel Arnold (19) finally lost his wicket padding up at the off spinner to give the Australians genuine hope that they may be able to initiate a much-needed fightback when play resumes tomorrow.