English upwardly mobile in rankings

ENGLAND will move up to second in the Test rankings after securing a series win in Sri Lanka, and they now have their eyes on India in first.

There remains some way to go to catch Virat Kohli and his side, but this is undoubtedly an England team on an upward trajectory that enjoyed a further positive jolt with their first overseas series win in nearly three years.

They completed a first series victory in Sri Lanka for 17 years, wrapping up the second Test by 57 runs on the final morning in Kandy.

The tourists, whose previous win on these shores came in 2001, needed just half-an-hour on day five to dismiss Sri Lanka for 243 — taking the last three wickets for 17 runs.

This result was earned over five hard days but its roots go back many months. Rome was not built in a day and England’s match-winning centurion can almost pinpoint the moment it all changed, the genesis of this newlook England back in April.

“It felt like we had a breakthrough moment at the start of the Christchurch Test match, sort of turned a corner,” said captain Joe Root, whose 124 saw him named man of the match at Pallekele.

“We had a little blip in the first Test versus Pakistan but since that moment we’ve really gone on an upward curve. Since that moment the attitude and the things we’re doing around the cricket are definitely helping us.”

This series victory owes much to Root’s captaincy, though he admits there are still kinks he must iron out that kept him awake much of the night — “three hours sleep I reckon” — before that crucial morning session on Sunday.

The victory also owes plenty to other strands of the ECB’s England set-up, the “hugely beneficial” Lions team that has blooded so many of this squad in testing overseas conditions for the first time and the One-Day team, whose increasing influence is clear to see in both personnel and philosophy.

England said they’d be positive and assert themselves and it was a promise they fulfilled with this historic overseas success.