Stroke of luck lets Ben thrive
Ben Stokes was yet to score when he played back to an off-break from Dilruwan Perera and was trapped plumb in front. or so it seemed.
For reasons best known to himself, umpire Chris Gaffaney said not out. With Sri Lanka having wasted both reviews, it was the moment of luck Stokes needed to play himself back into this series.
At Pallekele, he had cut an unusually subdued figure, save for 15 minutes before lunch on day two, when he ran out Dimuth karunaratne and caught kusal Mendis — two brilliant pieces of fielding that woke england up just as they risked drifting off.
But that was it. Stokes made 19 and nought with the bat, having spent all of one innings in his supposedly new role at no 3, and bowled a single over that went for nine. If Adil Rashid sometimes feels like england’s luxury pick, then Stokes (below) — more accustomed to the role of the team’s beating heart — was pushing him for the accolade.
Had Gaffaney ruled what seemed clear to the naked eye — that Perera’s delivery would have clattered into off stump — he would have been looking at successive test ducks for the first time since 2015, and an anticlimactic end to the year.
Instead, on a day when Sri Lanka’s fielders were driven to distraction by the decisions of Gaffaney and his colleague S Ravi, Stokes set about confirming that the 62 he made in the first test at Galle was no fluke. Having taken 15 scratchy balls to get off the mark, he settled down to show why england briefly regarded him as their future no 3, keeping out the good balls with a tight technique that seems at odds with his hell-raising reputation and putting the bad balls out of their misery. A straight six in the last over before tea off Perera felt more in keeping with his love of the grand gesture.
His presence seemed to enrage the Sri Lankans, as if he was a reminder of how much better their position might have been as they sought to avoid the humiliation of a 3-0 whitewash.
And so to another flashpoint, with Stokes on 26. Part-time off-spinner Dhananjaya de Silva was convinced he had him leg-before, but Gaffaney again demurred. For the Sri Lankans, it was too much to bear. De Silva hurled the ball to the ground and wicketkeeper niroshan Dickwella made clear his displeasure. Hawk-eye revealed umpire’s call on the point of impact. In other words, had Gaffaney given Stokes out, the decision would have been upheld.
the hosts’ mood darkened further when Lakshan Sandakan, the left-arm wrist-spinner playing his first game of the series, had an appeal against Jonny Bairstow rejected by Ravi. technology said the umpire had got it wrong.
Yet the cold-eyed truth was that Sri Lanka had only themselves to blame. twice before lunch they had wasted reviews on marginal decisions — a caught-behind appeal against Bairstow and an lbw shout against Joe Root. on both occasions, the hyperactive Dickwella deserved blame. And it left Sri Lanka with no recourse to technology when the umpires themselves started to err later on.
Stokes eventually fell for 57, prodding Sandakan to slip four balls after he had shared in Bairstow’s pumped-up celebration of his comeback hundred. He almost took out Dickwella with a furious swish of his bat, but he need not have been too hard on himself: of the seven england wickets to fall by stumps, only Stokes was out playing defensively. He really has had a strange series.