Australian captain Steve Smith reacted after his side were whitewashed for the first time against Sri Lanka after losing the third Test by 163 runs in Colombo on Wednesday (17th August).

"From my point of view where we went wrong, at 5-20 in the 1st innings allowing them to score 350. We then clawed our way back into the game, probably our best innings of batting on this tour and having said that at 1-250, to get bowled out for 350 was disappointing again. There was a chance for us to get a reasonable lead and get ahead of the game, but we weren't able to do that and it went down hill from there."

"I think that's our third straight whitewash loss in the Sub-continent in a row. What we are doing isn't working: batters aren't adapting to the conditions, spin bowlers aren't adapting. I can't fault our quicks (bowlers), I thought they did a great job particularly Mitchell Starc throughout this series. But our batters and spinners are the ones that need to step up in these conditions and we haven't been able to do that."