ENGLAND SEAL WHITEWASH
Jack Leach accounted for three of Sri Lanka’s last six wickets but it was his stunning piece of fielding that proved the decisive moment in England’s 42-run win in the third Test which concluded at the SSC Grounds in Maitland Place yesterday.
The spinner’s direct hit from deep backward square-leg found Kusal Mendis short at the non-striker’s end and broke a resilient sixth-wicket partnership with Roshen Silva that had reignited ideas of a consolation victory for the hosts.
Instead it was England Captain Joe Root who created history as the first English Captain to register a series whitewash in Sri Lanka.
Despite needing just six wickets to win the Test, the dismissal of Lakshan Sandakan early in the day didn’t precipitate the kind of collapse England would have hoped for, with Mendis and Silva working up the mountain of runs ahead of them. Mendis looked the more comfortable of the two, having scored a majority of the runs in the 30-run partnership with Sandakan, and pouncing on anything either too short, or too full, pulling Moeen Ali for six, and taking boundaries off England’s spinners.
Mendis reached his seventh half century, in 55 balls, ending a 12-innings run without a fifty and looked relatively untroubled and a good bet for a century, before a moment of indecision cost him.
This was not the first time in this series where a run out reversed the course of a potential Sri Lankan victory, in was just another entry in the long list of poor decisions their batsmen made in the three Tests.
In the second Test at Pallekele, Dimuth Karunaratne and Dhananjaya de Silva had put on 96 runs for the third wicket as the hosts attempted to build what would have been a decisive first innings lead, before Karunaratne was run out sensationally by Ben Stokes attempting an unnecessary run, with Sri Lanka’s eventual first innings lead proving insufficient.
Mendis’ run out was just as needless, but more spectacular in execution. After nudging Adil Rashid to deep backward squareleg, Silva called for a second run, banking on Leach, to throwing to the strikers end.
But perhaps, sensing Mendis’ lethargy in completing the first run, wicket-keeper Ben Foakes urged Leach to throw to the non-striker’s end, where the most precise of direct hits found Mendis short of his crease.
Ironically Mendis had only just survived a run out shortly before, when Stokes’ wayward throw allowing him get back to the crease despite being half way down the crease. Silva would complete a half century in the over after Mendis’ dismissal but it left Sri Lanka
still needing 141 to win.
Niroshan Dickwella, the last specialist batsmen, looked neither
comfortable, nor willing, to see Sri Lanka to victory, giving Keaton Jennings his fifth catch of the Test and Leach his third wicket of the innings. Moeen then dismissed Dilruwan Perera and Silva in successive overs, before Leach also ended the last wicket partnership between Suranga Lakmal and Malinda Pushpakumara for 58 runs that frustrated England for almost 50 minutes before they could claim the series whitewash.
It seemed appropriate that both teams would have to wait through the entire review process before it was confirmed that there was not enough to overturn the leg-before wicket decision that ended Sri Lanka’s innings.
It was not a Test that will live long in the memories of Umpires Sundaram Ravi and Chris Gaffney who had as many as 11 decisions overturned in this Test alone. Pushpakumara’s unbeaten 42, that included six boundaries and a six, was a personal best by some distance for the number 11 batsman, and proved the more frustrating of the final two batsmen.