Forceful lower-order batting undoes visitors’ excellent work in the first half of opening day
Matt Roller29-Aug-2024This was a missed opportunity for Sri Lanka. England’s batters played charitable hosts at Lord’s, laying it on thick with a series of self-inflicted dismissals on a slow, blameless first-day pitch. Yet after tea, the champagne hardly flowed: England added 142 for 1 in the final 29 overs, leaving Sri Lanka to rue their profligacy.Their day was personified by Lahiru Kumara, the bustling fast bowler who replaced Vishwa Fernando. He struck with his fifth ball, having Dan Lawrence caught behind, and had Chris Woakes caught on the hook in the afternoon. But his final spell of the day was a tired one: Gus Atkinson crunched his short ball over midwicket, and he looked exhausted.When Atkinson and Matthew Potts added an unbroken 50 for the eighth wicket in 10.3 overs, Sri Lankan heads dropped. Their fatigue in the final session was encapsulated by Kumara’s loosening-up for his final spell: after bowling a practice delivery to Prabath Jayasuriya at mid-off, Kumara took his eye off the underarm return and dropped the brand-new ball on the turf.It was a particularly frustrating day for Dhananjaya de Silva, Sri Lanka’s captain, whose surprise decision to bowl first when he won the toss looked for a while as though it had paid off. England lost wickets regularly in slipping to 216 for 6, and with Ben Stokes’ absence prompting a longer tail than usual, the game was wide open. Instead, Atkinson crashed 74 not out from No. 8.”We’ve done well in the first session, and what we were expecting was to get them out for 320, something like that,” Aaqib Javed, their bowling coach, said. “The partnership between [Joe] Root and Gus actually took them along, and when you’re expecting a wicket to fall after six wickets, it’s getting sometimes frustrating. The energy level from 65 overs to 80 was a little bit down.”Related
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After a superb record-equalling hundred, Root gifted his wicket to Milan Rathnayake on 143, fluffing a reverse-scoop to be caught in the gully. And yet, most frustratingly for Dhananjaya, his team failed to capitalise in the final 45 minutes of the day, spraying the new ball around. “There is tiredness, there is fatigue, and it’s showing,” Kumar Sangakkara, Sri Lanka’s former captain, said on commentary.The man who capitalised was Atkinson, whose approach was simple and clinical during his maiden Test half-century. He put particular pressure on Sri Lanka’s spinners, launching Jayasuriya for two straight sixes over mid-off and combining with Root to take Kamindu Mendis’ three overs for 27, rendering him unbowlable and bringing the seamers back for third and fourth spells.”How well did Gussy strike the ball?” Root said on Sky Sports. “I’ve seen him play enough to know that it’s in there, but… I’m dying to be able to play shots like that. There was a pull shot he played to deep square: we got one, but we had to sprint a single. He hits it that cleanly. We need to get him into golf, because that swing is pure.”With Potts unbeaten on 20 overnight – the top score of his own fledgling Test career – England are eyeing a total of 400 or more on the second morning. “Those guys in particular set things up nicely going into day two,” Root said. “They stepped up and really made life difficult for Sri Lanka at the back end of the day, where you can cash in and you can score quite quickly on such a fast outfield.”Sri Lanka have fought hard across the first five days of this series, with England facing moments of real jeopardy. But their attack’s inexperience – their four main bowlers in this Test have won 57 previous caps between them – has shown twice when bowling to the tail: on the third morning in Manchester, and now on the first evening at Lord’s.
