Sri Lanka v England
3rd
Test Day 3: Two Fallible Sides Serving-up a Series of Twists and Turns
November 25th 2018
Sometime tomorrow, barring yet another bizarre twist in this series,
England should wrap-up a 0-3 victory: only the third side ever to do so in Sri
Lanka. They will do so, despite showing serious fragility that the Australians
and Indians, amongst others, will be watching with great interest, given that
both will be opponents in the next year.
There have only ever been eight successful fourth innings chases at the
Sinhalese Sports Club Ground at Colombo in thirty Tests there that have reached
a fourth innings – the most recent, in 2005 – while eleven times, it seems
likely soon to be twelve, the chasing side has lost. To win, Sri Lanka must produce the
highest successful chase at the ground and the eighteenth highest in Test
history. And they must do it from a perilous 53-4, with a nightwatchman at the
crease and the England spinners getting plentiful help, quite apart from Ben
Stokes doing what Anderson, Broad and Curran have failed to do, by taking
wickets. Stokes has one fewer wicket in 26 overs than Lakmal, Anderson, Curran
and Broad have managed in total in the series in 126.
Strange things have happened in this series. Both sides have had
top-order collapses that have made it appear that batting was impossible,
before the same bowlers have then started to look totally inoffensive and the
pitch as flat as a pancake. No one knows whether or not England will turn up in
the morning and find that the biorhythms are wrong and that catches go down,
the bowlers cannot hit their line or length and the side looks totally flat in
the field. However, the main difference between the sides has been the way
that, even when a match has seemed to be slipping away, someone has stepped-up
and swung the match back England’s way. In the first innings, things looked
very difficult for two sessions until Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid turned the
innings upside down.
Provided that the nightwatchman falls early, England can afford to be
patient and set attacking fields. There are runs in the bank. Sri Lanka does
not have a lot of batting left. Karunaratne and Mathews, who were two of the home
batsmen who will look back on the series with most satisfaction, are gone.
Unless one of the remaining batsmen shows some real stubbornness, the match may
not go far beyond Lunch. But there lies the rub. If the nightwatchman hangs
around and Mendis gets a proper start, things could easily go flat again. Add a
hundred run partnership and the win will not look anything like so certain,
leaving England in need of another spark of magic. We have seen both situations
both in this match and in the series: just when you think that another house of
cards collapse is about to happen, Sri Lanka show some real right.
One thing that has been evident in this Test is that an England tail
without Curran and Anderson does not stick around in the same way. However,
after a horrible top-order collapse, in which the top four could aggregate only
thirty runs, Stokes, Buttler Moeen, Foakes and Adil Rashid did just enough to
set a target that should be too many to chase.
Burns and Jennings have not sealed their places. One innings at #3 does
not make Bairstow a long-term solution. All three will need to have a good tour
of the Caribbean to nail down their spots for the summer. And, while playing two
spinners against the West Indies and Australia is a distinct possibility,
England are not going to play three: even though the suggestion is that Jack Leach
will be the one to miss out, if long, containing spells are required, Moeen Ali
and Jack Leach may be a better combination, but at the cost of a longer tail.
With the wicket-keeper standing up for 90% of the overs, Ben Foakes is
essential but, when the fraction of overs bowled by the spinners drops to 30 or
40%, an effective stopper who is a front-line bat may be more important. However,
Ben Foakes might argue that he is the highest run-scorer on either side, although
runs against Sri Lankan spinners do not guarantee runs against the Australian pace
attack. In other words, while this series has clarified many issues for next
winter’s tour of India, half the places in the side will be up for grabs in the
West Indies.
There is still a match to be won and time for players to impress. How
many runs would be equivalent to another brilliant grab or two by Keaton
Jennings at Short Leg? While Perera is guaranteed to be the top wicket-taker of
the series – even if Moeen Ali takes all the remaining wickets, he can only
equal Perera’s 22 – Moeen, Jack Leach and Adil Rashid can still all finish the
highest wicket-taker for England and thus earn some brownie points. At the same
time, their averages are almost identical and they also have similar strike
rates and are in a battle with Ben Stokes and Perera to top the bowling averages
for the Test series.
For everyone, this is the last chance to impress before the squad is
picked to play the West Indies.
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