SaqOlly Stone spoke of England’s frustration after a dismal day in south London in which they were forced to bowl only spin in the final session and surrendered a dominant position in the third Test. After tea, with England’s bowlers on standby, Sri Lanka climbed from 142 for five to 211 without further loss, reducing their first-innings deficit to 114.
“Those are the rules, right? You can’t change them,” Stone said. “They take all the control away from us. Obviously we would have loved to have a bowling alley there. It’s just one of those things that’s frustrating but has to be done.”
The laws of the game state that “it is for the referees alone to decide together whether … the light means that it would be dangerous or unreasonable to play.” But they add that “conditions must not be regarded as dangerous or unreasonable merely because they are not ideal.”
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Asked if the bowling was dangerous or just not ideal, Stone said: “Everybody could see the ball, I guess. As a team, we want to stay on the pitch as long as possible and we have to rely on what the umpires say, and unfortunately today we didn’t get to bowl. I guess there’s a point where it can get dangerous, and you don’t want to see anyone get hurt. We’ll continue to provide entertainment, whether it’s bowling or spin, and try to keep the game moving.”
Stone took two for 28 and was involved in a run-out during the afternoon’s play when England’s seamers were dropped. At one point, Chris Woakes was forced to bowl four balls of spin after the umpires decided, two deliveries into an over, that it was too dark for him to continue at full speed. “It was a tricky game where we wanted to stay on the field and this was the option to do it,” Stone said.
In the morning, England collapsed from 261 for three to 325 all out, with the batsmen repeatedly punished for attempting risky shots. “We always say take the positive option and another day we miss the fielders, it goes to the boundary, the score goes up and you factor that into your innings of bowling really on the front foot,” Stone said.
Those cheap wickets and an unbroken 118-run partnership between Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis prompted Sri Lanka head coach Sanath Jayasuriya to declare it his team’s best day of the series. “The fact is we bowled very well in the morning,” he said. “We realised what was wrong yesterday – we missed the length and the line a little bit, and we corrected ourselves. We discussed what was wrong and the good news is they came back and bowled well.”
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