Sri Lanka's spinners become the <i>Goodfellas</i>

Sri Lanka's spin bowlers are as innocuous a group of people as you may care to encounter.

The gang's kingpin, Rangana Herath, is approaching the age and shape whereupon Sri Lankan men begin taking abrupt daytime naps on the verandah while the tea they had been drinking is incrementally spilt upon themselves. He has never been known to sledge, through a career that now spans 318 wickets. And such is his commitment to cricketing honesty, that he once famously walked with five balls remaining in a Lord's Test, when he wasn't actually out, and only Nuwan Pradeep stood between a draw and defeat. (Pradeep, by the way, had been out comically falling onto his stumps in the first innings, and bless him, has the batting competence of a coconut husk).

Dilruwan Perera, meanwhile, seems more likely to produce vomit than a coherent reply when a reporter poses a question. Lakshan Sandakan is chattier, and more excitable - but in the way of a toddler still discovering the world around him. When he appeals, you can almost picture a child on the supermarket tiles, pleading for a chocolate bar.

But in Pallekele, and now in the first two days in Galle, these men have led unsuspecting Australia into a dark alley, drawn shivs, and merrily stabbed away. They have smiled their way through the brutality. They have benigned their way through 29 wickets. And seven days into the series, it's time to start preparing the large black trash bags. It is time to make room in the boot of the black sedan, and pick out a spot in the woods.

A spinner's menace is often in the turn he extracts. Yet in this series, Steven Smith has repeatedly warned Australia about that seemingly harmless straight ball. In being dismissed by that very ball by Herath early on day two, Smith was like the police commissioner who read out the description of a known area suspect, then was found in a city dumpster the next day, all rolled up in an old carpet. Usman Khawaja was out to Perera's slider, just the previous ball. Late in the day, the same ball, from the same bowler, took his off stump out again. So stricken by fear of this sliding mass-murderer was he, that not even a stroke was offered. Not a shot was fired in self-defence.

Mitchell Marsh and Adam Voges attempted to solve the case of the non-spinning delivery through their 8.3 over morning stand, but were beaten lavishly and repeatedly throughout. Marsh blocked out a Herath delivery to end the 23rd over. When he got to bat again, three wickets had fallen at the other end. In this he was like the inspector who gets knocked unconscious in a gang fight, and finds his team completely overrun when he comes to. People have woken up from long comas with less having changed in their world.

Nathan Lyon then fell prey to the same ball. Josh Hazlewood was gone almost as soon as he appeared. Sri Lanka are sometimes criticised for never considering an XI with five frontline bowlers, but the incredible thing about this innings, is that for its majority, two of their four main bowlers were completely superfluous. Sandakan finally got the ball in hand with nine wickets down, and he struck almost immediately, what else, but with a ball that drifted a little, but pitched and went virtually straight on.

In the afternoon, like criminals who receive plea deals and begin working for law-enforcement, Herath and Perera picked up their bats, and made Australia's bumbling seem even more ridiculous. They swept gaily away as Lyon told Perera, that he can "only play f***ing Tests at home" because he is the second spinner. They drove Mitchell Starc down the ground, and pulled Hazlewood to midwicket. Just to rub it in, it was with a six that Perera moved to a score that was higher than any Australia batsman had mustered so far in the series. They put on 61 together. Australia's best partnership in Pallekele had brought 62.

The visitors will now begin day three 388 runs adrift, on a pitch they do not like, facing bowling they do not understand, playing for a trophy they are very likely to lose. All this thanks to the work of three undemonstrative men who, on the surface, appear as inoffensive as a slow, loopy ball that lands on the pitch, and continues in the same direction.

If a Sri Lankanised Scorsese character introduced any of these spinners, he'd say: "You're going to like this bugger. He's all right. He's one of us, no? He's a good fellow."