Dilshan bats through the pain to provide a ray of sunshine amid the gloom

CRICKET:AFTER TWO days of top-class sun-drenched Test cricket, the gloom descended on Lord's, first a blanket of cloud cover and then, mid-afternoon, the drizzle, through which shone the floodlights elevated on to their stalks. It was the last anyone was to see of the cricket for the day but as the crowd drifted their damp way home, they could reflect that they had been witness to the completion of one of the greatest Test innings played in adversity – team and personal – that this ground has seen.

Tillakaratne Dilshan was dismissed by Steve Finn shortly before the first of several stoppages, but not before he had taken his overnight 127 to 193, bettering by three runs Sidath Wettimuny’s Sri Lanka record for the ground.

There was a roar when Finn’s delivery cut down the hill, clipped the thigh pad and cannoned into the top of the off stump, but it would have been tempered with a measure of regret, for no batsman can have worked harder in the team cause – enduring discomfort for most of the innings – than he in only his second match as captain.

No one, not even England’s ruthless operators, would have begrudged him those seven extra runs to give him a double century and join Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya and Marvan Atapattu as the only Sri Lankans to achieve that against England.

Dilshan played an innings true to his instincts. He attacked, with reckless abandon at times. Circumspection outside off stump was counterbalanced by forays of bat-throwing that almost dragged him off his feet. Some connected, some only did so partially and sped past groping slips. Others slid past the outside edge so that those in the vicinity would have heard the whoosh as his bat beat the air.

He defended strongly too, countering the moving ball and that which lifted, especially yesterday when the pitch appeared to have quickened; deviation, under the cloud, was extravagant at times, and the bowling unpredictable. No shots, of the 22 boundaries and two sixes that he hit, encapsulated more the essence of his game than the withering back-cut off Graeme Swann, a karate-chop of a shot, followed next ball by a cover drive, threaded through the protective infield, that took him to 150.

Beyond all this, though, Dilshan had played an innings in pain. During Sri Lanka’s first innings in Cardiff he had been hit on the right thumb, exposed on the bottom hand, by Chris Tremlett, and required lengthy attention. It would have been troubling him coming into this game. Then, with his first delivery after the tea interval on Saturday, when he had 55, Tremlett once more cracked into the joint.

In David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia, there is a scene where Peter O’Toole, as Lawrence, extinguishes a match with his fingers, to the amazement of a watching corporal, William Potter. “Doesn’t it hurt?” Lawrence was asked.

“Of course it hurts,” he replied.

“Then what is the trick?”

“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”

There have been many brave innings played under the pain of a cracked digit. Allan Border on this ground springs to mind while Steve Waugh made a century in each innings at Old Trafford while similarly incapacitated. The trick, though, is not minding that it hurts, treating the pain as a means of concentrating the mind rather than a distraction.

Dilshan had reached 192, though, when Tremlett did for him again, not a glancing blow this time, but a full-on shot that rocked the thumb back in shock. His hand flew from the handle in that lawnmower action familiar to all cricketers. An X-ray later revealed that the digit was bruised. Five more deliveries, one more run, and he was gone. It may have happened anyway given the manner in which the ball had behaved. But enough may have been enough. Even for Dilshan’s resolve.

Sri Lanka are right in the game, however, at 372 for three, with Jaywardene, twice a centurion on this ground, ghosting his way to an unbeaten 40, and the England lead is down to 114. They added 141 yesterday and although the bowling was still too wayward England pursued a better length, with Finn in particular doing well after lunch and the batsmen no longer able to rely on seeing off the good balls in the knowledge that a hittable one would soon materialise.

For all the movement, though, they had managed only the single wicket, of Kumar Sangakkara, caught behind from Tremlett’s fourth delivery with the second new ball. They will bowl much better than this on flatter pitches in the future.

They could have done with the injured Jimmy Anderson for the ball swung, and there is none better when that happens. He is due to play Twenty20 for Lancashire this week to prove his fitness for the third Test after a mild side strain kept him out of this one.