CRICKET:RAIN THERE may have been – preventing play until after lunch – but coming into the final day this match is by no means dead. For all the runs so far, with Sri Lanka matching England's first-innings 486 by all but seven runs, the pitch and atmosphere have offered plenty to the bowlers throughout: a little good fortune, with some edges going to hand and sticking, and who knows what might happen in the final stages? Cardiff last week taught us that lesson.
So England cracked on in the evening, intent on putting some more pressure on the Sri Lanka batsmen. There will be no challenging declarations, no sniff of a chance to the opposition, no enticing carrots dangled (you do not do that when one match up in a three-match series) but they would like sufficient time to make another statement.
The bedrock of England’s second innings was supplied, naturally, by Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott. Yesterday they added 117 in 26 overs for the second wicket – their fifth century stand in the past nine times together – after Andrew Strauss had fallen lbw for the second time in the match to the new-ball bowling of the left arm Chanaka Welegedera, this time to the second ball he faced.
That Trott was bowled for 58 by the fourth ball purveyed by the left-arm spin of Rangana Herath was a surprise to him as much as anyone in the ground, for yet again it seemed only a stick of dynamite would otherwise shift him.
But it did add piquancy to the final hour because it brought Kevin Pietersen in to face the demons.
For a whilehe was tentative, anxious even. At the other end Farveez Maharoof was escorted through to the keeper with an upraised bat. Then, to his 26th delivery, and 13th from Herath, he advanced once more and belted the living daylights out of it, gunbarrel-straight over the umpire for a thunderous boundary.
For Cook, though, it was just business as usual. A delicious threaded cover drive took him past a half-century once more and, with Pietersen on 15, he will resume this morning on 61, with England on 149 for two.
Strauss, on the other hand, is becoming a concern, not so much with the idea that he is particularly susceptible to left-arm pace but the fact he is simply not scoring runs as he has in the past.
In his last 20 matches, or 32 innings to be precise, in the two years since he made a hundred against Australia on this ground, he has scored 1,076 runs ( about as many as Cook has in his last 11 innings) at an average of 34.7 against a career average of more than 42.
It is the underlying story that is the most telling, however, for in the first part of his career, his conversion rate of half-centuries into hundreds was outstanding. Indeed his first 18 Test hundreds came from 32 times past 50. His single hundred since, in Brisbane, has come from 11 half-centuries.
Yesterday he was the victim of his first-innings dismissal, when he played around a ball that came back at him. Welegedara’s second ball was beautifully bowled, starting down the line of middle and off and straightening towards off. Strauss had lined him up and, rectifying his first-innings technical error, was covering, with a straight bat, any further inward movement. Instead the ball shaped deliciously past his outside edge and clipped his back leg. It was a top-class delivery.
England had done well to dismiss Sri Lanka in the afternoon, with the ball, for once, finding the edge and the fielders doing their job. There was still considerable room for improvement from the seamers, particularly in terms of delivering a consistent line, but the 58 extras, as many as Sri Lanka have ever been donated, was more of a reflection of the way the ball had moved extravagantly when past the bat, than, for example, a comment on Matt Prior’s keeping.
Still, the last seven wickets fell for 85 runs in 23 overs, a brace of them to Steve Finn – four in the innings – whose rhythm and technique, particularly the straightness of his follow-through, was more in keeping with expectation.
There were three for Graeme Swann, who mopped up the tail, and one each for Chris Tremlett and Stuart Broad.
FOURTH DAY
ENGLAND first innings 486 (A Cook 96, I Bell 52, E Morgan 79, M Prior 126, S Broad 54)
SRI LANKA first innings
(overnight 372-3)
T Paranavitana c Strauss b Finn 65
T Dilshan b Finn 193
K Sangakkara c Prior b Tremlett 26
M Jayawardene c Cook b Finn 49
T Samaraweera c Prior b Tremlett 9
P Jayawardene c Swann b Finn 40
F Maharoof lbw b Broad 2
R Herath st Prior b Swann 26
D Fernando c Strauss b Swann 5
S Lakmal not out 0
C Welegedara c Broad b Swann 6
Extras (b25, lb23, w8, nb 2) 58
Total (all out; 131.4 overs) 479
Fall of wickets: 1-207, 2-288, 3-370, 4-394, 5-394, 6-409, 7-466, 8-472, 9-472, 10-479.
Bowling: Broad 32-5-125-1, Tremlett 30-8-85-2 (1nb), Finn 33-8-108-4 (1nb, 3w), Swann 32.4-5-101-3, Pietersen 4-0-12-0.
ENGLAND second innings
A Strauss lbw b Welegedara 0
A Cook not out 61
J Trott b Herath 58
K Pietersen not out 15
Extras: (lb-5 w-1 nb-9) 15
Total: (two wickets, 41 overs) 149
To bat: I Bell, E Morgan, M Prior, S Broad, G Swann, C Tremlett, S Finn.
Fall of wickets: 1-0, 2-117.
Bowling (to date): Welegedara 7-1-25-1 (1nb), Lakmal 8-0-31-0 (3nb, 1w), Maharoof 7-0-24-0 (2nb), Fernando 11-1-47-0 (3nb), Herath 8-1-17-1.
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