During the Boxing Day Test of 2018 in Melbourne, Tim Paine tried his hand at banter with Rishabh Pant. The Australian Test captain suggested Pant could perhaps babysit his children in his spare time, with MS Dhoni back in the limited-overs squad. A week later, with Pant smashed his bowlers around at the SCG, an Indian fan group turned Paine’s joke into a song: He’ll hit you for a six, he'll babysit your kids.

Did Pant come through as a babysitter? Well yes, there's a photo of him with Paine's kids in his arms on social media. Did he hit sixes? More than most in the game.

Under the shimmering Galle sun on Day 4, Pant hit his 100th six in Tests. That took him level with Adam Gilchrist, the man who first injected modern Test cricket with a batting serum that could flip whole games in a short passage of play. The player ahead of them both, Brendon McCullum, was cut from the same cloth too, with 107 sixes to his name. Ahead of them all is the outlier, Ben Stokes, who cracked 137. By the time Pant is done with this format, though, he could be miles ahead of everyone on that list. He has needed just 4,918 deliveries to reach this milestone, which is the real outlier in this group: Gilchrist took 6,578, Stokes 9,042 and McCullum 9,756.

Towards the end of the morning session, after Sri Lanka's spinners had done the bulk of the bowling, Dhananjaya de Silva turned to Lahiru Kumara for an over. Pant accepted a length loosener first up, stepping out and whacking it over extra cover and out of the ground. That was No. 99. Early in the second session, India were five down, but their lead was already nearing 300, and there was an appetite to pile on more. The game was well and truly in Pant territory.

For Sri Lanka, it was about continuing to gnaw away before the game slipped further from their grasp. They had already seen Pant smash a good-length ball out of the ground, so they attacked him differently after lunch. Asitha Fernando returned with five boundary riders for the left-hander. He went round the wicket and kept bowling short. The idea made sense: play the Indian batter at his own risk-reward game. But Pant didn't bite. Not immediately at least. He kept swaying away from the line of the rising deliveries, watching them thud into Niroshan Dickwella's gloves. Even when he did get bat to ball, he consciously kept it down, taking the risk of a dismissal out of the equation. Fernando's only option was to go back, reload and try again. This went on for a while.

Nuwantha Keshara, who bowled unchanged all day, laid out off-side traps for Pant and kick-started a mini-tussle. The round-the-wicket angle added to the tease, but Pant kept reaching the pitch of the ball and letting it go. His exchanges with the spinner weren't entirely one-sided: on an occasion or two, Keshara caught Pant in two minds and found a nick that didn't carry to a fielder. When he pushed his lengths up, Pant edged the contest back in his favour by sweeping him away. This went on for a couple of overs before Pant cranked up the dominance. He reverse-swept a full ball from the offie for four, then pulled a course-corrected shorter one and played another reverse sweep in the same over.

Sri Lanka's grip on not letting the game slip began to loosen. Dhananjaya brought back Kumara in place of Fernando, but the main idea remained: spread the field and bowl short. Pant shuffled across and pulled him over fine leg for his half-century with his milestone six, but was mindful enough to get out of the way of a bumper on the very next ball. After frustrating Sri Lanka and blunting their plans for the better part of an hour in the second session, Pant began to step out and be more himself.

Kumara bore the brunt, conceding a couple of fours, but soon had his wicket too. Pant fell trying to smash a short ball, top-edging it to Dickwella: the perfect result for Sri Lanka's plans. Except it came after he had added 66 off 69 deliveries and given India's lead a strong nudge forward. Pant played out 21 deliveries from the pacers at the halfway 10m length for 17 runs before perishing to the 22nd. He took eight runs from three hard-length deliveries (8-10m) and smashed the one good-length ball (6m) that came his way for six. He walked off looking miffed with himself, but this part-calculative, part-carnage effort carried more value than he'd realised.

"I think he is one of those batters who you love to watch every day of the week," Devdutt Padikkal said of his swashbuckling teammate. "And he produces moments like he did today. When something like that comes off, I think it's always great to watch."

Ravindra Jadeja would fully concur. In a 54-run alliance off 60 deliveries, Jadeja's grand contribution was 7 (17), leaving him to spend most of his time watching a thriller play out at the other end. Pant's exit, after all the twists and turns, triggered a quick end to India's innings, but they walked away with a lead of 371. On a 14-wicket day, when Sri Lanka could take some pride in their bowling returns, Pant had still bent the game to his will and claimed a record along the way.