England's tough task

Cricket Test matches:Wearily, after more than six sweltering sessions in the field, England began the painstaking process of pushing a large boulder up a steep hill.

Left 29 overs to bat last night, after Mahela Jayawardene called a halt to his team's first innings at 548 for nine shortly after tea, Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook began the second England innings with some abandon, rippling out their strokes as if this was a Sunday jaunt and knocking off 48 of the 198 runs they require to avoid an innings defeat before bad light let them off the final 16 overs.

Today, with Sri Lanka's pace bowlers having had their early new-ball foray, England will face the inevitable ordeal of Muttiah Muralitharan on a wearing pitch, him against them as the main event, all else a sideshow.

In Kandy, where he sent down 36 second-innings overs to help secure the match for his side, he found little help from the pitch beyond turn. But Murali, with a flick of his wrist, would turn an ice cube on a skating rink.

What he needs to go with it, to be devastating rather than merely relentless, is bounce and here, at the Sinhalese Sports Club, he may well get it from the large patches of rough on both sides of the wicket, created by the bowlers during the four days' play.

Two exploratory overs from him last night gave little clue as to what might follow today, but England would do well to survive a full day and may, in the end, be grateful of a change in the weather that suggests the latter stages may be disrupted if they are to take the series to the final match in Galle next week. Whether Sri Lanka come to regret the pedestrian manner in which they progressed to their total is a moot point. There was criticism of similar sluggish tactics in Kandy and there they managed to time their victory to perfection.

Certainly Mahela Jayawardene, while a game up in a three-match series and knowing surely that of the three Test grounds for them in Sri Lanka, England's slenderest chance of winning comes south of here in Galle, is not in the business of offering a sniff of a chance. If that sounds unduly defensive then a Test series is about jostling for position and then securing it.

Guardian Service