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Usman Khawaja reached his first hundred of the summer in its last innings. (AP: Rick Rycroft)
For a sport like cricket, which is so reliant and so informed by its long and immaculately documented history, every Test match is important.
Every run and every wicket means as much as the many thousands that came before, all combining to tell the stories of this weird old game's greatest players and teams. It's a game of stats and records and numbers, and none can be discounted.
Still, this Test in Canberra has felt like a bit of a slog.
There's no doubt the second Test of a two-match series that has inexplicably spilled into February rates lower on the importance scale than, say, the first Test of an Ashes series or a crucial series decider against India. As the final act in a long, exhausting summer featuring more downs than ups for Australia, it's not hard to understand why.
The entirety of the third afternoon was, in terms of this match, simply wasting time. Had it wanted to, Australia could have won this Test batting once. With Kusal Perera still suffering from concussion and Sri Lanka well and truly down for the count, there's every chance Australia could have wrapped it up on day three.
But Tim Paine opted to bat again, a decision informed by factors pertinent to this game — getting out of the Canberra heat, giving the bowlers a rest, using all the time remaining in the match to properly grind the opponents down — but also some more skewed to the long-term.
In fact, most of this day of Test cricket for Australia was more for the future than for now.
Take Australia's second innings, for example. On the face of it, these were 47 overs of relatively inconsequential batting, but the successes and failures could have implications that long outlast any memory of this match.
The good was Usman Khawaja. Out of form and mentally scattered all summer, he took this opportunity to wipe his brain clean and just bat. And when he does that, there is still no purer cricketer in this Australian line-up.
Sure, a 101* in the most low-pressure Test scenario imaginable is hardly going to compensate for what has been a poor season — though don't forget his second-innings 72 in Perth, without which Australia loses to India 4-0 — but for a confidence player like Khawaja it's a handy boost.
Plenty have called for him to be dropped from the side, but the truth remains that for Australia to have any hope of Ashes success, the team needs to feature an in-form Usman Khawaja scoring runs at number three. Anything that makes that situation more likely, even if it's a dead rubber ton against Sri Lanka, should be treasured.
The bad, unfortunately, were Marcus Harris and Marnus Labuschagne, the only two Australian batsmen who will leave Canberra without a score to their name.
It's a missed chance that only looks worse when you consider how poor their dismissals were, and the fact that next time an Australian Test XI is to be selected, blokes named Steve Smith and David Warner will be ready to fill the very spots Harris and Labuschagne failed to completely lock down.
Of course it's not a terminal situation for either of them, not when you consider how highly coach Justin Langer holds them both. But you'd have to think a century from either of them would have gone a hell of a long way to booking their flight to England. As it stands, the case is that little bit harder to make.
Then there was the morning's fun and games, most of which centred around Mitchell Starc.
Much like Khawaja, Starc has endured a strained summer some way short of his best, but on day three in Canberra got to enjoy somewhat of a renaissance. Swing has been elusive for Starc for some time now, but this time instead of going searching he fell back on his other handy weapon — the ability to bowl really bloody fast.
He ripped through the tail, as he is known to do, completing a five-wicket haul of comparable regard to Khawaja's hundred. But, and again like Ussie, more important than the how was the what — Starc just needed wickets to release the valve, even if it took a couple of tail-end scalps and a hit wicket to get them.
Starc remains a key cog, a barometer of sorts and a player who has been as maligned as he has been celebrated. He may need some time to correct the technical aspects that have kept him from peak performance, but he can now look to the future with slightly fewer doubting voices — internal and external — in his head.
So while it may not have seemed it at the time, hindsight may reflect upon this as a vitally important day for the Australian cricket team. It might be the day two of Australia's most important players started to get their mojo back.
Topics: cricket, sport, canberra-2600, act, australia
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