Gillespie backs Warne to make an impact

Jason Gillespie, who took 2 for 20 today, said that Shane Warne would have plenty of opportunities to take wickets tomorrow. "Shane is a quality bowler," he said. "He could extract something out of the wicket even though there is not a lot of rough on it. There is a lot of assistance for the bowlers if you can put the ball in the right spot. It still has got bounce, which is important. There is enough in it to keep you very interested."

Gillespie added that Australia will be looking at every opportunity to force a win, and that anything over 350 would be hard to get. However, John Dyson, Sri Lanka's coach, was sceptical of Warne gaining much assistance from the pitch. "This wicket has not been as friendly to spin bowling as the ones back in Sri Lanka," Dyson claimed. "Obviously the batsmen reckon it is a little bit easier to play Shane than some of the other pitches they've faced him on."

Assessing the situation of the game, Dyson said: "It is very much in favour of the Australians. They can dictate what happens. We've got to try like crazy to limit their scoring and make it extremely difficult for them to score." He continued, "I think we did pretty well after tea for a while, then [Damien] Martyn came out and played a superb innings at the finish.

"At the start of the day I was hopeful of getting a lead and unfortunately it didn't work that way," he added. "[Thilan] Samaraweera batted extremely well to get us where we finished up. It was unfortunate to lose Kalu [Kaluwitharana] early and a little disappointing with the tail. In the last nine months we had a few matches where the tail had really kicked. Unfortunately it didn't today."