ENGLAND RACE OUT THE BLOCKS
Bess and Broad strike gold... before captain Root piles on the runs
Joe Root warned of the perils of yet another slow start after the most inadequate build- up england can have had to any overseas test series. He need not have worried.
Far from the type of rusty first day that has proved so costly in the Root era, england raced out of the blocks to take total control of the first test at a Galle ground sadly missing the masses of england fans and their flags that usually make this one of the great venues.
true, england were given a large helping hand by a display of extraordinary Sri Lanka batting incompetence that drove their animated coach Mickey Arthur to distraction. But Root can have asked no more of his team than to hurry out Sri Lanka for 135 at an iconic ground where the hosts were once so formidable, and then to move within eight runs of them by the close, the captain leading the way with a classy unbeaten half century.
So who needs warm-up games? Not england on the evidence of this performance after just one day of intra- squad practice in Hambantota, amid the disruption caused by a positive Covid test for Moeen Ali and the subsequent isolation of Chris Woakes.
the start of what promises to be england’s busiest test year began with Stuart Broad carrying on where he left off last summer, taking wickets and confounding anyone who dares suggest he should be left out of the test side.
even after Broad hit back so spectacularly from being dropped from the first test against West Indies last year, there were plenty of us who felt he would be the one to miss out here, not least because he had taken only three wickets in three tours of Sri Lanka.
How could we be so naive? Instead, it was the 600 test wickets of Jimmy Anderson that were left on the bench to accommodate the pace of Mark Wood, while Broad doubled his Sri Lankan test tally with three of the first four wickets to fall.
Yet spin was always going to be the biggest weapon in Galle, even though england were without two of the three slow bowlers who propelled them to their famous 3-0 victory in Sri Lanka just over two years ago — Moeen and Adil Rashid. the one remaining spinner from that trip, Jack Leach, was making a welcome return after a largely absent 2020, but it was his erstwhile Somerset colleague Dom Bess who took the honours with his second five-wicket haul in his 11th test.
In truth Bess was not only out-bowled by Leach, but he was not at his best at all. No matter. He did not need to be against a shambles of a Sri Lanka side betraying their proud heritage as expert players of spin.
only Dilruwan Perera could do little about his dismissal, being beaten by a lovely off-break that dipped and hit the base of his off- stump, but Bess’s other four victims handed their wickets to him. Yorkshire’s recent signing will bowl a lot better than this for far fewer rewards.
Leach had to settle for the wicket of Dinesh Chandimal, well caught by Sam Curran in the covers, which was a particular relief to debutant Dan Lawrence, who had spilled a straightforward chance when Chandimal had made 22 of his 28. It was england’s only real lapse in the field and it was far from costly as Sri Lanka looked more undercooked than england, even though they have only just returned from an injury-hit 2-0 defeat in South Africa.
those injuries continued to haunt them as they were without their captain Dimuth Karunaratne, still struggling with the right thumb problem he suffered in Johannesburg, and in his absence Sri Lanka looked rudderless and incapable of the disappearing test art of batting time.
Quite how Sri Lanka greats Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, both masters of the long test innings, stayed calm as they surveyed the wreckage for Sky’s multi- national coverage from their homes in Colombo is anyone’s guess.
It did seem england might have as many problems against Sri Lanka’s three-pronged spin attack when Dom Sibley and Zak Crawley fell to the left- armer Lasith embuldeniya, but any home hopes of a comeback proved shortlived.
enter Jonny Bairstow, given another chance at three in the absence of Rory Burns, ollie Pope and Ben Stokes. After a year’s absence from the test side and working with assistant coach Graham thorpe, he now has a considerably tighter test technique. How well Bairstow played in an unbeaten partnership of 110 with his captain and how brilliant Root was in moving to yet another test half century, successfully overturning an errant lbw decision from Ruchira Palliyaguruge when he was on 20.
this is the start of a year that will decide whether Root, aged 30 and in his 98th test, will be remembered as a truly great batsman and captain or merely a very good one, and his challenge today is to go really big, as he has done all too rarely of late.
And if he does, maybe the one english supporter who made the effort to be in Galle for the game — 37-year-old Rob Lewis, aka the Barmy Army’s DJ Randy Caddick who has been in Sri Lanka since the postponed tour in March — will be able to say: ‘I was there.’ even though nobody else was in these difficult times.