The Australia batting order presented in Colombo, with Shaun Marsh displacing Ricky Ponting at No. 3, looks a more convincing line-up, says Peter Roebuck, writing in the Age.

Upon reflection, changing the order is worth a go. In some quarters it might be regarded as weak, with captains past and present retreating and a newcomer thrown to the wolves. Moreover, the shift does not solve the problem, merely avoids it. Of late Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke have been failing in their previous locations, averaging in the mid twenties ....

To these eyes, anyhow, the order presented in Colombo looked more convincing. While the idea of putting Ponting at six is absurd - if he needs that much protection then he is finished - four is still an important position, a point emphasised yesterday. He has not exactly been withdrawn from the firing line.

Australia deserved considerable credit for their tireless efforts to shift a Sri Lankan batting order intent on survival. It was hard yakka because the pitch in Pallekele was as inoffensive as an Andy Williams song writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Here's a conundrum. The pitch in Galle was considered so dubious that it has been reported to the ICC, and presently a dogsbody is expected to give the curator the cricketing equivalent of a kick up the backside. Yet the Test was a fascinating contest.

Any chance of asking spectators for an opinion about pitches? Maybe Galle was a bit dusty but batsmen cannot spend their entire lives smacking the ball around on roads. Pallekele was unduly placid but no one seemed too worried about that.

No individual in the game's history has had such an impact on his team's fortunes as Muttiah Muralitharan, Dileep Premachandran says in the National. The effect his retirement has had on Sri Lanka brings to mind New Zealand's woes post Richard Hadlee, he writes.

Before Muralitharan made his debut in 1992, Sri Lanka had won just two Tests. Over a 132-Test career in which he took 795 wickets - five were against Australia for the International Cricket Council World XI in 2005 - he contributed to 54 wins. In those triumphs, he took a staggering 438 wickets at 16.18. Over the past two decades, Sri Lanka have won just five times without him. Since his exit against India in Galle last year, they have lost three Tests and drawn six.

Ricky Ponting’s absence for Australia’s second Test against Sri Lanka – he flew home for the birth of his second child – is an opportunity for the younger generation to display their credentials for Test cricket. In the Age, Peter Roebuck runs the rule over those next in line.

David Warner deserves his chance. His career has been held back partly because NSW has mishandled him and partly because he has suffered from hotness in the head. Nevertheless he is only 24 and averages 53 in state cricket. Of all the younger batsmen he had the tightest technique, just that his career threw him into another world and gradually looseness crept in.

In many respects Warner is the first product of the new cricketing age. It has been his fate to be denied the traditional batting education and instead to be encouraged to hit hard and often. Fame and fortune smiled on every six.

Australia's win in the first Test against Sri Lanka in Galle has shown that while they have not turned into a team of world beaters, they continue to play organised cricket, writes Peter Roebuck in the Herald on Sunday. Moreover, it confirmed that the culture - severely criticised in the Argus review - has improved, which will assist anyone joining the side.

In the field, though, the visitors continued to play tight cricket and to look like a much improved outfit. Heavily criticised in the Argus report, Australia's team culture has held up well. Of course it is early days. If a team lacks spark at the start of a summer and under a new captain and with a couple of country boys making their debuts, then the game is up.

The Daily Telegraph's Tom Sangster tells the story of how four balls in a third-grade game in 2005 transformed Trent Copeland from a wicketkeeper-batsman to a seamer.

The equation was simple: St George needed four wickets. The frontline bowlers were spent. Rain was looming. Umpires were grumbling. Only 10, maybe 15 minutes until the heavens opened and the game was done. Drawn. And nobody like draws. "It was almost like, 'Oh well, the game is done here, we may as well give Copes a bowl'," the Bathurst product recalls. Twelve balls later and Copeland had taken 4-1. Four swerving yorkers. Two LBWs. One scattered castle. And a snick to slips. St George had won, the beers were flowing, Oh When The Saints was blaring, a champion was born, and the rest is history.

Peter Roebuck, in the Sydney Morning Herald, says Ricky Ponting is looking fit, light and alert, but his dismissals in Galle suggest his mind is the one thing letting him down.

Most likely Ponting's mind has been liberated by his return to the ranks. Maybe he feels a bit like Berlin after the Wall was removed. Perhaps he is keen to play his shots, enjoy his cricket and so forth. But it's never as simple as that. Getting out hurts just as much.

Unimpressed by the predictability of limited-overs cricket, Greg Baum says, in the Age, it was refreshing to see Nathan Lyon and Trent Copeland stick to the basics of Test cricket in Galle.

There was no splintering of stumps, nor did some gaudily clad fieldsman perform boundary rope contortions to take a telegenic catch, nor was there a commentator's ejaculation. Rather, Nathan Lyon and his receding hairline shuffled a couple of steps, pivoted and looped his first ball in Test cricket towards Kumar Sangakkara. Innocuous to look at, it pitched, bit, brought up a puff of dust. Sangakkara prodded it uncertainly to slip, where Michael Clarke's reflexes were quick enough to track it and scoop it up in his outflung left hand.

A clearing up of the poor management in Australian cricket has given the players the confidence that they will be rewarded for playing for their team, Patrick Smith says in the Australian. As a result, the team are playing some of the most disciplined cricket they have in years in Sri Lanka, he writes.

Yet before the Argus report was tabled with its evisceration of Australia's cricket management, coaching protocols and aimless selection theories, it might be that Australian players were not confident enough to play cricket in the previous disciplined manner that was the tattoo of the great teams of the 1990s and early 2000s. If 12 wickets on debut guaranteed you just 49 more overs, if two hundreds in a Test was a pre-cursor to demotion as it was with Phil Hughes, then unity of purpose within any team can evaporate with each and every incomprehensible management decision.

A wicket off his first ball in Test cricket and a five-for on debut ... Nathan Lyon has made dream start to Test career but comparisons with spin legend may be a tad early writes Robin Scott-Elliot in the Independent.

There is no shortage of cautionary tales to accompany Lyon to the second Test, chief among them Krejza himself. The off-spinner took eight wickets in his first Test innings three years ago (although he also conceded a record 215 runs). Peter Taylor, the off-spinner who, legend has it, was chosen by accident, took six wickets on his debut against England in 1987 but played only 13 Tests, and that was seven more than Bob Massie, who took 16 wickets on his debut at Lord's in 1972, managed.

Warne's debut was anything but notable, 1 for 150 in his first innings against India. He went wicketless the first time he bowled in Sri Lanka too amid great expectation. For Lyon the expectation will only grow.

The last cricketer to take a wicket with their first ball in Tests was Sri Lanka's Chamila Gamage, and he only played one more Test. Gamage told Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror it was difficult to calm one's nerves enough to make your first ball count, and said he hoped Lyon plays more Tests than he did.

Lyon looks the goods, writes Malcolm Conn in the Daily Telegraph. With his loop, drift, turn and bounce he is more dangerous than left-armer Michael Beer, who played the last Test in Sydney and is on this tour. And unlike the many who have come before him recently, Lyon may be with us for some time, but don't expect miracles or another Warne-style record-breaking career.

Lyon's dream was to become head curator at the Adelaide Oval. Just months ago he was dreaming of growing grass in Adelaide, but now he is raising dust and hell in the shadow of the Galle fort, bamboozling some of the world's most experienced players of spin bowling. Peter Lalor in the Australian tracks Lyon's journey.

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says there was a level of professionalism in Australia's combination in the Galle Test, as they produced their most suffocating bowling performance for a long time.

Throughout a fretful Sri Lankan innings, the visiting flingers forced their opponents to work for every run. Meanwhile, an alert captain set astute fields. It was a far cry from the gormless cricket observed in recent campaigns ...

Australia's bowlers contributed superbly. Already the attack looks stronger. Not that it is exactly lethal or that every day will go as smoothly. Nor will every pitch be as bone dry or the opponents as supine. But there is honesty and professionalism in this combination that has been missing.

Writing for thewest.com.au, Tom Moody says Shaun Marsh, his ward at Warriors and Kings XI Punjab, is primed for a Test debut in the upcoming series against Sri Lanka.

I am not going to compare Marsh to his WA teammates Adam Gilchrist, Simon Katich and Mike Hussey but there is one strong thread running through the careers of each one of them. They were all closer to 30 than 20 when they made their Test debuts and soon forged stellar careers built on the solid foundation of many seasons of State cricket. There is every reason to think Marsh could follow that path.