SaqIn the end, the match came down to three Yorkies and one Yorker. Vishwa Fernando had spent most of that series working as Sri Lanka’s second-best bowler, called Fernando, but before all that he had started his summer with three games for Yorkshire in the County Championship, and if he didn’t learn much about Joe Root and Harry Brook during that time – neither Englishman played in any of those games – it perhaps added some spice to the moments after lunch when he moved the ball and his two temporary team-mates walked.
Root came into this match with an unbelievable series average of 116.66, and in their preparation Sri Lanka focused heavily on identifying ways to minimise his threat.
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“One of the main things that will concern us is how we are going to dismiss him,” opener Dimuth Karunaratne said on Wednesday. “He is the one who has scored runs in this series and if we manage to get him out, we can win this game.”
He scored 13 in the first innings and 12 in the second, and while by the time Vishwa struck three wickets had already fallen, it was when he flicked the ball into Root’s boot in his first over of the day that Sri Lanka’s optimism turned to belief.
In his second over, Vishwa trapped Brook, who, like Root, reviewed the match but headed to the dressing room on sight of the first replay. From there, only Jamie Smith’s brilliant appearance and Sri Lanka’s counterproductive determination to give Olly Stone a taste of his own medicine – in the form of a couple of overs of sharply telegraphed and fairly innocuous bumpers – allowed England to emerge from their innings with either credit or, despite their opponents quickly repelling them, hope.
It may be unfair, but it has also been impossible at times not to compare events at the Oval this week with the previous English Tests played here – the conclusion of last summer’s Ashes, Stuart Broad’s farewell, that ball change, a thrilling festival of drama, noise and chaos.
It’s not that it’s a lesser occasion – that was inevitable – or that the cricket has been less intense – likewise – it’s that it has often seemed fundamentally trivial, sometimes collapsing over the boundary fence into the downright ridiculous. The stand-in captain, the midfield batsman invited to open, the giant debutant who has no first-class record to speak of, Chris Woakes spinning, bowling and dropping catches, Saturday’s dark and dismal final session all-rounded, Pope taking his DRS record as captain to zero for 10, the moment on Sunday when it rained on the JM Finn Stand while they were still sunbathing at the Galadari, England losing 14 wickets for 146 at the end of their first innings and the start of their second – it’s all been a bit unserious.
Brendon McCullum’s team may have, as he says, refined their approach, but they certainly haven’t redefined it, and on Sunday Sri Lanka’s bowlers attacked the situation the way Storm Lilian attacked the Leeds Festival late last month: mean, aggressive, but probably not the sort of thing that would have been so destructive if so many people weren’t there to have a good time, not to have a good time. It may seem an unnecessary precaution and the sort of behaviour that gets in the way of a good party, but if you don’t bother to stake your tent, at the first gust of wind it could just blow away.
None of the Sri Lankan bowlers were in the mood for mischief. Their coaches’ repeated and scathing criticism of their efforts on the first day may have galvanised their spirits, as might have the moment captured on the microphone when Stone threw bouncers at the Sri Lanka tail, and Asitha Fernando told Lahiru Kumara that they just had to “give him a taste of his own medicine”. Both players duly ripped apart the English opening order.
There was also the fact that for one team this round represented a final chance to take something positive from their tour, and for the other the series win might have felt like a minor inconvenience at the end of an intense summer. Once you think about home it can be hard to turn back, and perhaps that helped Sri Lanka focus, with a Test series against New Zealand starting as early as next Wednesday it is not really the end of anything.
Beyond Dan Lawrence’s uncomfortable attempts to open the scoring, this has been a poor series for England. It is telling that of the team’s five greatest duos, three have involved Gukinson.
Just a few days ago, some in the England camp were speculating optimistically about the possibility of qualifying for the World Test Championship final next summer, which would almost certainly require victory not just here but in each of their six winter outings. Perhaps it was just banter. Sometimes it is hard to tell.
Saq
