After
a hot and not-so-happening tour of India, England were back
on the field to take on the Asian lions Sri Lanka, on their
own soil at LordsBoth the teams were handicapped due to injuries
to their star players: Michael Vaughan, Stephen Harmison and
Ashley Giles for England and Marvan Atapattu for Sri Lanka.
But this saw a couple of very young cricketers debuting in
test match cricket - Sajid Mahmood for England and CK Kapugedera
for Sri Lanka. The captaincy of England was once again trusted
in the hands of Andrew Flintoff, despite a comeback by Trescothick.
The
game looked one-sided for the first three days. England won
the toss and under cloudy conditions elected to bat. And what
a wise decision it proved with Trescothick (106) making a
century on comeback and Andrew Cook ably supporting him with
89. Then came Kevin Peitersen, England’s find-of-the-decade
as he thrashed the Sri Lankan attack to all parts of the ground.
His knock of 158 included 19 fours and 2 sixes. It was a treat
for the weekend crowd who came in large numbers to support
the home team. England finally declared with the score 551
for 6. Muralitharan was the pick of the bowlers with three
wickets. Vaas seemed unlucky to pick up just two wickets.
Sri
Lanka started reply with ball swinging square and as predicted,
lost both the openers early. Sangakara and Jayawardene steadied
the ship with a 50-run partnership. However, the drama reached
its peak when Sajid Mahmood took three quick-fire wickets
to leave Sri Lanka reeling at 91 for 6 at the close of play
on the second day. Despite a fighting effort from the tail-enders,
the innings folded for 192 all out. Matthew Hoggard picked
up four wickets for 27 runs.
Sri
Lanka, 359 runs behind, were expectedly forced to follow on.
Not may times have teams following-on put up a great show.
But this time it was Sri Lanka’s turn to put their hands
up and lead the match to safety. Inspite of losing Jehan Mubarak
early once again, the ship sailed smoothly with Sangakara
and Upul Tharanga both reaching half centuries. The fourth
day belonged to Jayawardene (119) who scored one of his best
hundreds to save the game for his side and was rightly declared
the Man-of-the-Match. Monty Panesar gave useful breakthroughs
in his first international outing on home soil. Vaas and young
Nuwan Kulasekara also scored fifties in a 110-run partnership
to deny England their chances of winning. This might have
reminded England of their match in Auckland against New Zealand
in 1997 when Danny Morisson and Nathan Astle put a last wicket
stand of 106 to deny England a victory. As they say history
repeats itself and so it did at Lords. Sri Lankan batsmen
were greatly helped by England fielders who dropped as many
as ten catches in the match. There was not much to choose
among the English bowlers as the Lankan lions kept on building
partnerships. Sri Lanka, who folded within 60 overs in the
first innings, batted for over 14 hours to finish on 537 for
nine in their second innings when bad light forced the players
off for the last time in the first test of a three-match campaign.
It
certainly was a morale-booster for Tom Moody and his players
who wanted some start to get their form back. Sri Lanka had
even lost their warm up game miserably, so the second innings
was the right kind of boost they could have asked for. On
the other hand a lot needs to be done about England’s
catching which was pathetic to say the least. As Flintoff
mentioned in his interview:
“It was a bizarre game. Nine or 10 chances went down
- and whatever it was it was catching. You look to find excuses
and reasons why we dropped them. We practice in the morning
and we take most of them in the drills."
The
second test starts on May 25 at Edgbaston and one thing is
for sure that it would be as thrilling as this encounter was.
Sanath Jaysuriya’s return to the side should only lift
Sri Lanka even further.
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