My second most recent post here was titled “England in Control in Spite of Themselves” This post brings that story up to date.
THE END OF DAY TWO
The light closed in with Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis still in residence. Pope continued to treat the occasion lightly, using Root in partnership with Bashir when the light was too bad for pacers. This approach would have been justified for five or six overs just to see if anything good happened, but Pope kept it going for 17 wicketless overs which yielded 69 runs.
DAY THREE
This was Heritage Open Day (see here), so I missed the early part of the day. England had done well with the ball in the morning, claiming a first innings lead of 62, and had lost Duckett by the time I joined the coverage. Lawrence made his highest score to date as an opener (35), but it was an incredibly unconvincing innings, and his name is absent from the squad to tour Pakistan, with Crawley fit again. However, this was where phase one of England’s punishment for their earlier lackadaisical approach began, and only one score higher than Lawrence’s would be registered in the innings, as Sri Lanka found their bowling mojo with a vengeance. Jamie Smith did his best for the cause, with a magnificent 67, the last 50 of which, with tailenders in at the other end, came in 17 balls. Even with this performance to lift it the whole innings mustered a mere 156, the lowest total England have ever scored in a home match v Sri Lanka (previously 181, also at The Oval, in 1998 when Muralidaran weaved his webs to the tune of 9-65). That left Sri Lanka needing 219 to win. Pope started out as though he had 400 to defend rather than just over 200, and runs were soon coming at an alarming rate. Woakes took a return catch to dismiss Karunaratne for 8, but that was the only scalp for England that evening, and Sri Lanka scored 94 runs before the light closed in, with Pathum Nissanka completing his second 50 of the match, both of them at better than a run a ball.
DAY FOUR
England never looked like getting back into things, and the game was done on the stroke of lunch, Nissanka hitting a four which took his share of the spoils to 127 not out, to give Sri Lanka an eight wicket win. Kusal Mendis fell to a superb catch by Bashir off Atkinson for 39, but Angelo Mathews provided excellent support for Nissanka, who was simply majestic. He showed England how to score rapidly AND safely – the split between boundaries and running between the wickets was almost 50/50 – 13 fours and two sixes = 64 in boundaries, and therefore 63 out of 127 actually run, but he was adept at picking gaps and getting back for twos. Nissanka was Player of the Match for his performance, absolutely rightly. Root was Player of the Series, and Kamindu Mendis was named Sri Lanka’s Player of the Series. Match details here.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
aspiblog 