Weight of history bears down on Australia

In their efforts to overcome Sri Lanka this week in Galle, Australia will not just be battling the vagaries of Asian conditions and the skills of Rangana Herath, Kusal Mendis and Lakshan Sandakan. Steven Smith's men will also be confronting history - almost 140 years of it.

Never in all their years of Test matches, dating back to 1877, have Australia come back from 1-0 down to win a three-match series. The last time Australia successfully overturned a 1-0 deficit in any series was during the 1997 Ashes in England, where a heavy defeat in the first match at Edgbaston was overcome 3-2 by Mark Taylor's team. That encounter was fought over six Tests: a luxury the current side does not have.

The size of the task ahead is not lost on Smith, nine matches into his captaincy and five days distant from a first defeat. "I guess it would be nice to create some history then, wouldn't it?" Smith said. "We're still confident that we can win this series. We're going to have to play well, we're going to have to play better than we did in Kandy, but I'm hopeful that we can do that."

Matters of how to achieve this success boil down to a pair of challenges: dealing more effectively with the array of spin bowling presented by Sri Lanka on a dry Galle pitch in order to build big innings, and getting the best out of a bowling attack that will feature a spin debutant in Jon Holland alongside Nathan Lyon, and a pair of potentially explosive pacemen in Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

Smith wants to see his batsmen play to cover balls hitting the stumps in order to try to avoid the surfeit of lbw and bowled dismissals that bedeviled them in Pallekele. He also acknowledged the advice of the former captain Ricky Ponting to avoid being trapped on the crease by good length deliveries.

"It's obviously different to batting against spin back home, [where] you can trust the bounce and trust what the ball's going to do as such," Smith said. "For us, we haven't done it overly well in the last couple of years. Looking at the dismissals in the first Test match, the balls that skid on are generally not half-volleys; they're generally pretty good length balls.

"In saying that, it's hard to sometimes distinguish which ball is going to skid and which ball is going to spin. So it's about trying to one get the bowlers off their lengths as much as you can, make them a little bit uncomfortable, but at the same time if they do get in a good rhythm and you are playing from the crease, particularly against someone like Rangana [Herath] its playing for that ball that is going to skid on. If it spins and you nick one so be it, but we didn't lose any wickets on the outside of the bat in the last Test match, so I think you can live with that."

One of the more revealing elements of Australia's preparation was the fact that Starc and Hazlewood were kept away from the nets on their main training day, instead doing one-on-one work with the bowling coach Allan Donald on a centre wicket. Donald was working with South Africa when they recently defeated Sri Lanka on this ground, when reverse swing proved as dangerous as any spin. Smith wants greater economy from his bowlers, and both Starc and Hazlewood should be better for the run last week.

"Looks pretty dry, I daresay it's going to take some spin, which at the same time there's quite a big breeze so I think it will drift a lot for the spinners," Smith said of the conditions. "Talking to Allan Donald who was here with the South African team in that game, he said the ball reversed quite significantly from both ends.

"[Morne] Morkel had it going away from the right handers and [Dale] Steyn had it going into the right handers, so we've got Starc who can do [away swing to right handers] and Hazlewood can do [in swing] and Mitchell Marsh bowls good reverse swing as well, so we've got the bases covered. It's just about going out there and making sure we do the right things this Test match."

As for Holland, he and Smith have already spoken at length about how best to bowl in Sri Lanka. "I had a few chats to him about paces and the seams that work here," Smith said. "Playing in Australia, the spinners that seem to do well there are the ones that get over the top of the ball.

"The ones who seem to do well in the subcontinent are the ones that actually come under the ball and bowl with that side seam. He's been working on that over the last couple of days and he's bowled pretty well in the nets. He's got that little bit of extra height, he's quite tall. It's hard to pick up the length which is pretty key in these conditions."

To turn this series around, Australia will need a lot to go right. History, or humiliation, beckons.