Cricket: Clarke thrilled by Australian effort

Australia put the upheaval of cricket back home to one side to secure the one-day series against Sri Lanka with a five-wicket win in Colombo on Saturday.

Captain Michael Clarke revealed after the match that his players had made a pact not to discuss the Argus Report as they aimed to win game four and take an unassailable 3-1 series lead in the five-game tournament.

And in a display where the gulf between the two teams was wider than the final margin, all the worries of administrators and board members was clearly having little impact on those currently charged with representing Australia on the field.

Xavier Doherty claimed a career-best 4-28 in a man-of-the-match display, sparking a collapse that Brett Lee completed with his own four-wicket haul as Sri Lanka lost 8-37 to be all out for just 132 in front of a stunned 35,000 capacity crowd at the Premadasa Stadium.

Despite two quick wickets by paceman Lasith Malinga (2-18) at the start of Australia's chase and a three-wicket spurt towards the end by debutant Seekkuge Prasanna (3-32), Shaun Marsh's composed 70 was the bedrock as the tourists reached the target with 22 overs remaining.

"There's always issues outside of the game that you face every day as a distraction," Clarke said when asked if he was worried the report would derail his team's tour.

"What I try to tell the boys is that it's up to us to determine how big a distraction it actually becomes.

"We left our meeting the other day and made a pact to each other that we weren't going to talk about it.

"Our job is to play good cricket on the field, our job is to prepare as well as we possibly can to win a game of cricket. We did that yesterday at training.

"We had an optional training session yesterday that every single player turned up to. We probably trained too hard to be honest, I was a little bit worried we were going to be a bit tired for today but it was the complete opposite."

Clarke acknowledged with one more one-day international and a three-match Test series still to come on this tour that the job was far from complete as far as he was concerned.

But after making it two wins from two ODI series since taking over from Ricky Ponting as Australia's captain following the World Cup, the 30-year-old was happy to enjoy the moment of beating Sri Lanka on their own turf.

"It's great to win the series," the delighted skipper said.

"There's still a long way to go on this tour, don't get me wrong.

"We've played some really good cricket and it makes my job a lot easier when you have individual performances like we had from X (Doherty), from Brett Lee and from Shaun Marsh.

"For me, part of the captaincy is changing the bowlers at the right time and setting the right fields but when you execute your plans as well as we have done in the three games we've won, it makes the captain's job very easy."

The series wraps up on Monday with a final match at the same venue before Australia take on a Board XI in Colombo in a three-day tour match.

The first test will be played in Galle from August 31.

- AAP