Tectonic shift in Sri Lanka's gameplan?

There is no doubt that at present Sri Lanka are experiencing change. It's too early to tell if the team will be better off in coming years, or worse. For now, change is just change. But as Sri Lanka fast bowlers claimed six wickets on a seaming pitch in Pallekele, one thing became clear: this change is strange.

Ever since DS de Silva sent down his first legbreak in the 1982 inaugural Test, spinners had claimed the island for themselves. Through the years, the Test team has trotted out every kind of slow bowler in the book, as well as a few for whom the book had to be rewritten. Seamers were glorified sandpaper. Pramodya Wickramasinghe reports sometimes being told to "just make the ball old". Spinners would waddle around the infield in the early overs, then saunter over to dispatch the seamers to fine leg, saying, "Let the big boys handle it from here, kid." For about 30 years, Chaminda Vaas had been the only exception to this.

But in the last two years a mini resistance has built. King Rangana Herath held court, of course, but around him a squad of quicks came together from around the coast. Shaminda Eranga emerged from north-western Chilaw. Suranga Lakmal from southern Dabarawewa. Nuwan Pradeep won soft-ball competition in Negombo, before Dushmantha Chameera was discovered in the same town. Even Dhammika Prasad, though an SSC stalwart, is from outside Colombo city limits.

As they broke Pakistan open on day two, Prasad occasionally getting seam movement as crazy as his eyes, Pradeep getting swing to provoke strokes as poor as his haircut, Sri Lanka continued their upending of stereotypes. Sri Lanka's quicks have now taken 24 wickets in this series, to the spinners' combined tally of 13. On the opposition, legspinner Yasir Shah has 22 wickets for himself. Is a little revolution taking place in Sri Lanka's Test cricket? Is their gameplan fundamentally changing?

The transformation has been a while coming. Lakmal and Eranga enjoyed a good tour of the UAE last year, then the quicks blasted Bangladesh out twice in a four-day Mirpur Test. For so long, Sri Lanka had been the team that spent days in the field wishing a Muttiah Muralitharan or a Herath could bowl from both ends, because all the seamers did was give away runs. Suddenly they were actually contributing. Though they remained works in progress, the belief in them accumulated. Their self-confidence rose.

By the middle of 2014 Sri Lanka's quicks went overseas and even had the gall to attempt bouncing out the opposition after choosing to bowl first at the home of cricket, of all places. It didn't work, at the time of course. Joe Root and the England tail murdered the bowling up and down the hill at Lord's, then dragged the attack to a dodgier neighbourhood to stuff into a dumpster. But the mere fact that: a) Sri Lanka's thinktank imagined a short-ball plan could end in anything but profound humiliation, and b) 30,000 spectators didn't break en masse into laughing fits upon seeing the first few bouncers, was the kind of progress that should bring a tear to every Sri Lankan eye.

How incredible is it that this Pallekele pitch even had real, live grass on it on the first morning? This is a country in which surfaces are so closely tailored to the team's demands, curators basically send pitch-sample swatches to captains before a series, along with a bouquet of flowers and a card that reads: "I'll give it to you any way you like." More than likely, Sri Lanka were after a seaming track for this match. Not so long ago, things were very different. If a pitch had had a green tinge, say, in the mid-noughties when Murali's play-doh wrists were at large, the curator would have been summoned to Colombo, marched to the zoo and fed to the animals there.

On Saturday, when rains rolled through the venue you could almost imagine the match was being played in the seam-bowling wonderlands of early-summer New Zealand or England. The only difference is that the staff are more efficient at protecting the field from rain here. If you ever need to build a bonfire in a lake, a Pallekele groundsman would figure a way to keep the wood dry.

When play resumed after each rain break, Sri Lanka's seamers emerged energised, positively slavering for the ball, which they quickly had shimmying around the surface. Prasad jagged one in to nail Asad Shafiq in front of the stumps soon after the first disruption. Azhar Ali lost fluency after the second interruption, almost nicking Prasad, before leaning out to send Pradeep to second slip. Shan Masood had been nailed by a swinging yorker. Ahmed Shehzad was teased into sending the ball to the wicketkeeper, off almost the face of his bat.

In this bold, new pace-bowling age of Sri Lanka, Tharindu Kaushal still flies the flag for unorthodox spin. But as he furiously ripped every ball he bowled on Saturday, slipping in the occasional doosra, he seemed like the guy trying a little too hard to bring a retro trend back. When Kaushal turned balls into Ehsan Adil and Rahat Ali's front pads late in the day, he showed spin was not obsolete. But if Sri Lanka's selection for this game is any indication, the team is not buying it.

Perhaps in the post-Herath era, Sri Lanka will give in to the military-medium revolution, and Kaushal will wind up playing many more home Tests as the side's sole spinner.  For now, Sri Lanka are well placed in a ball-dominated Test series. Not many would have thought it would be the quicks that got them here.