Shane Warne fell desperately short in his world record bid but took a bundle of wickets in the nick of time as Australia scored a momentous victory over Sri Lanka in the third cricket Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club.

Australia won by 121 runs with eight balls to spare after bowling out Sri Lanka for 248, the world champions taking 6-64 in the final session as the home side chased 370 to win.

Warne took four wickets in the last session to drive his team to victory and finished the innings with 4-92 to sit on 517 career wickets - two shy of Courtney Walsh's world record mark of 519.

Fittingly, the untiring Michael Kasprowicz sealed the win with the fourth ball of the second-last over.

The win gives Australia a 3-0 series whitewash making Ricky Ponting's team the first touring side to achieve that feat in Sri Lanka.

It also gave Ponting a perfect treble of wins to start his Test captaincy reign.

Only three other Australian captains have begun their tenure win three straight wins.

On a day that started with Warne looking for seven wickets for the world record and Australia needing 10 for victory, things didn't go the way of the world champions until Darren Lehmann and Warne struck either side of the tea break to tighten the screws on Sri Lankan.

For much of the day, Warne applied plenty of spin and extracted some bounce but couldn't take the wickets he and his team wanted.

At one stage Sri Lanka looked to have closed the door on Australia's victory bid when the home side reached 2-156 late in the middle session.

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