Being Outside Cricket

It is always difficult to judge a game after the first day and so this has proved again today. England would have marginally been happier with the outcome of Day 1, especially after finding themselves in a bind again with their batting with only Sam Curran and Jos Buttler taking the attack to Sri Lanka and leading them to what they hoped would be an above par score. As they headed into Day 2 with a wearing pitch even after 1 day, a brittle Sri Lankan batting unit and 3 in-form spin bowlers, England would have been hoping to emerge with a vital first innings lead. That this didn’t would have been a source of great frustration for England.

England had an indifferent start to the day, with the only wicket to fall being that of the night-watchman. It did appear that England were trying to bowl a little too full or were hoping for some kind of magic ball to grip the pitch and spin prodigiously rather than look to bowl in good areas and get the Sri Lankan batsmen out through skill and patience. Indeed it took some divine intervention from Ben Stokes in the field to finally break through the resistance of the Sri Lankan batsmen with the first being a superb run out with only one stump to aim at and the 2^nd through an outrageous catch at slip off the bowling of Leach. It has been debated just what Stokes is bringing to the team with his relative poor form with bat and ball and the emergence of Sam Curran; however he is still one of the few England players that can really spark something in the field. These were timely dismissals as England looked like they were a team on the verge of panicking and this was followed up by some excellent bowling from the much maligned (not here) Adil Rashid who bowled a testing spell that took both the wickets of Matthews and Mendis and gave England a shot at the lower order with a decent lead still to preserve.

So with Sri Lanka now 165-6 and staring down the barrel much as England did on Day 1, their lower order batted with some guts and not little skill to frustrate the tourists and carve away at the England lead. Sri Lanka led by Roshen Silva and ably assisted by first Dickwella and then Dhananjaya batted in very much the way I expected them to at the start of the tour. The English spinners suddenly looked less potent whilst the Sri Lankan batsmen milked them around the field and consistently put away the bad ball to first catch up and then surpass England’s lead on what is a tricky pitch and one that is only going to get more difficult. When Sri Lanka were finally bowled out (supposedly the first time since 1976 that an English seamer didn’t take a wicket) with a priceless lead of 46, the momentum had swung immensely and now Sri Lanka were in the box set moving into Day 3. The only slight tarnish on the Sri Lankan batting was when Marais Erasmus decided to penalize Silva for intentional non grounding of the bat and hence awarded 5 runs to England as way of punishment. Personally I think this was very harsh, but England won’t care a jot, in such a tight game 5 runs could be the difference between a loss and a victory. There was also the slightly bizarre sight of Jack Leach padding up and walking out to open the order as night-watchman for the final over, though he’s still probably a better Test opener than Nick Knight ever was.

After 2 days of the Test, we are now basically in a ‘one innings match’, with England hoping to erode their deficit without too much damage and then look to set Sri Lanka something over 200 on a 4^th innings pitch. It will be interesting to see how England play over the next day, as one feels that a collapse is just around the corner with this England side especially on a pitch that is already taking a lot of turn. Day 3 will go some way in deciding the match, but either way it is refreshing to see a tightly fought Test match, especially after Sri Lanka were so comprehensively beaten in the First Test.

Thoughts and comments on the game below please.