England 120 for 4 (Buttler 38*, Moeen 4*) v Sri Lanka
If there was any doubt how much assistance the surface in Pallekele would provide for spinners in this match – and there really wasn’t very much – it was banished within a few minutes of the start of the second Test.
The first and final balls of the second over of the innings, bowled by offspinner Dilruwan Perera, fizzed past the outside edge of Rory Burns’ bat. By lunch, on a dry surface that is highly likely to deteriorate, England were four down with three of those wickets falling to spin. Suffice to say, it seems unlikely the game will progress into Sunday.
In such circumstances Joe Root would have been delighted to win his seventh toss in succession in Test cricket. But, for all the talk of spin, it remains seam – or at least pace – that appears Keaton Jennings’ weakness. Here he fell jabbing at one he could have left from Suranga Lakmal.
Despite those early scares, Burns was the most comfortable of England’s batsmen. Three times he swept Dilruwan Perera to the boundary; on another occasion he cut him there. He also picked up an early boundary off his legs against Lakmal. It was some surprise when he was drawn forward and edged to slip by a fine delivery in Akila Dananjaya’s first over.
While Burns might be forgiven for wondering how he could play such a delivery, Root might be forgiving for wondering how he missed the one that bowled him. Lunging forward to the left-arm spin of Malinda Pushpakumara, Root left a gate so large you could reverse park a caravan in it and simply missed a straight one. It was the third time in the series he has been dismissed by left-arm spinners.
Ben Stokes started his first innings at No. 3 in typically positive style. He was down the pitch to his first delivery, bowled by Lakmal, and flicked his third through square leg for four. But while there was another flowing drive to the boundary off the seamer, life against the spin proved harder. He survived a reviewed appeal for lbw on 10 – which returned umpire’s call – but fell in almost identical fashion shortly afterwards, back when he should have been forward and struck on the back pad by one that turned and beat his outside edge.
Jos Buttler survived a nervous start. Attempting to hit Pushpakumara over long-on, he was beaten by the turn and only just recovered his ground before the bails were removed. From then on, however, he swept (both reverse and conventional) handsomely – at one stage Dananjaya was swept for three fours in succession – and, by lunch, had picked up 35 of his 38 runs in such fashion.
Earlier England had confirmed an unchanged XI from Galle, while Sri Lanka made two changes: Roshen Silva, who last played Test cricket against South Africa in July, replacing the injured Dinesh Chandimal and Pushpakumara for the retiring Rangana Herath.