England v Sri Lanka, 3rd Test: Day 3 - Sri Lanka’s Revival Hits the Buffers

 

England v Sri Lanka

3^rd Test: Day 3

Sri Lanka’s Revival Hits the Buffers

 

June 11^th  2016

This morning, everything was set up for Sri Lanka. The side was building on its second innings at Chester-le-Street. England have a record of relaxing and losing the final Tests of series. And two batsmen were accumulating with an old ball and the England attack looking toothless and out of ideas. You can imagine their idea was to get through to Lunch and then start looking to build the sort of lead that would allow them to put real pressure on, with men around the bat to Herath.

Far from going into the Saturday evening press conference grinning broadly and talking about taking a match-winning position into Day 4, Angelo Matthews is looking down the barrel and being asked if Sri Lanka can possibly save the game.

It look 7 balls of the morning session to shake the plan and 44 to wreck it completely. Two quick wickets for Woakes and one for Broad and Sri Lanka were in 169-4 and, suddenly, the Follow-On target of 217 was coming into play. At 205-6 it was still in play, given the length of the tail and the speed of the turnaround.

The Sri Lankans have to take a long, hard look at themselves. The ball was old. Conditions were in favour of the bat. The pitch looked designed to be a draw full of runs. And England seemed clean out of ideas as to how to take a wicket. Yet they suffered a horrible collapse, recovered briefly with a 71-run 7^th wicket partnership and then collapsed horribly again, as last four wickets fell for 12.

If England do finally make it 3-0 – which sounds so much better than 2-1 – Chris Woakes will have had a lot to do with it. He has taken a lot of stick from England fans, but for several years has been the most consistent all-rounder in the County game. In this series he has scored 105 runs in 2 innings (James Vince has 54 in 4), both times scoring vital runs when England were in danger of squandering a good position. And has 8 wickets at 17.9. His career batting average is now 29.3 and his bowling average has dropped to 40.8: everything suggests that the two will cross over far sooner in his career than Andrew Fintoff’s did. Not just did Woakes confirm the good impression that he has made, but Steve Finn bowled better than he has done since South Africa. And Jimmy Anderson did not take a wicket until the 8^th and 9^th of the innings, so no one can say that England were him and no one else.

Starting with a lead of 128, England used their tenth opening partnership since Andrew Strauss retired. The good news: this one has the second best record of the ten. The bad news: it was still nothing to shout about. With Alistair Cook being checked-out in hospital for a severely bruised knee (how often does the captain go under the lid at Silly Point when balls are flying like grenades??) Nick Compton came out for what most expected to be his last innings in England colours alongside Alex Hales, knowing that a century might embarrass the selectors, but probably not save him. By far the most successful pairing of the ten has been Compton and Cook, who averaged 57.9 together, with Moeen Ali and Alistair Cook the next most successful before today (that will surprise a few fans):

Partners	Span	Inns	NO	Runs	High	Ave
NRD Compton, AN Cook	2012-2013	17	1	927	231	57.93
NRD Compton, AD Hales	2016-2016	1	0	45	45	45.00
MM Ali, AN Cook	2015-2015	5	0	183	116	36.60
AN Cook, SD Robson	2014-2014	11	0	355	66	32.27
AN Cook, A Lyth	2015-2015	13	0	402	177	30.92
AN Cook, AD Hales	2015-2016	12	0	365	64	30.41
AN Cook, JE Root	2013-2013	10	0	266	68	26.60
AN Cook, IJL Trott	2015-2015	6	0	154	125	25.66
MA Carberry, AN Cook	2013-2014	10	0	250	85	25.00
MM Ali, JC Buttler	2015-2015	1	0	13	13	13.00

At 45-0, 173 ahead and Compton looking as if the knowledge of his execution had released the fantastic talent that he has, Sri Lanka were in a terrible mess. Nine balls later it was 50-3 and the spectre of being bowled out cheaply and setting a gettable target was all too real.

Not for the first time in the series Alex Hales has kept calm when things were going to pieces around him. Why some people question is position in the side still is beyond reason: he has more runs in the series by some distance than anyone other than Jonny Bairstow and 47 more than Compton, Root and Vince combined.

239 ahead, England will want at least 100 more to feel safe, with Alistair Cook likely to come in at the fall of nightwatchman, Steve Finn. Hales knows that a century, if he can get one, will seal his place, barring a catastrophic loss of form later in the summer and, almost certainly win the Test: it is a real incentive.

This series though is showing some bizarre twists. Another twist in the tail would not be so unexpected.