Buttler ‘feared worst’ after hitting rival
Sri Lankan fielder struck on head by pull-shot Burns reaches 47 on his first innings for England
England’s vice-captain Jos Buttler “feared the worst” when one of his typically powerful pull shots hit fielder Pathun Nissanka on his helmeted head from almost pointblank range in the warm-up match against a Sri Lanka Board President’s XI yesterday.
The 20-year-old Nissanka, fielding at short leg only a couple of yards from Buttler’s bat, ducked and took the almost 6oz ball flush in the middle of his helmet.
“You always fear the worst,” Buttler said. “I hit him [Nissanka] very hard and straight in the middle of the helmet but luckily the doctor and physio rushed straight on and treated him, and it’s good to know he’s doing better.
“It’s always a thankless position to field [at short leg] and unfortunately these things can happen and hopefully he’s not badly hurt. You’re just worried – that’s the nature of it. Of course you don’t mean to cause injury, it’s just a real unfortunate accident but he’s doing a lot better.”
Nissanka, who Buttler said was never unconscious while lying on the ground, was strapped to a stretcher and taken to hospital.
“He’s stable and conscious – there’s nothing alarming,” said the Board XI’S coach Avishka Gunawardene. He added that Nissanka would undergo an “MRI scan to make sure there’s no bleeding and that everything’s OK”.
After the ball had hit Nissanka’s helmet it rebounded to slip, where Buttler was out caught, following a recent change in the law.
“You don’t really care about getting out, you just hope the lad is OK,” Buttler said.
The happiest feature of the second day of England’s first warm-up – even more than an unflustered century by Joe Root – was Rory Burns’ first innings for England, which was only ended for 47 by a run-out – one that was more the responsibility of Joe Denly, another candidate to open the batting in the first Test at Galle on Tuesday.
Burns, the 28-year-old Surrey captain, faced 11 overs of pace, and reached 19, so he had achieved some momentum before the Sri Lankan spinners came on. Keaton Jennings, his opening partner, did not last long enough to face a ball of spin – he hesitated about leaving a ball and ended up playing it into his stumps off the inside edge.
Denly was more assertive than Jennings but less sure in defence, whereas Burns was never uncertain in deciding what to play, giving the impression that England need look no further for a successor to Alastair Cook as a phlegmatic lefthanded Test opener.
Burns drove the new ball for a couple of straight fours – the arc, or V, which was seldom explored by his predecessor – before he ran down the pitch and whipped two consecutive offbreaks to the wide long-on boundary with strokes of even higher class.
On this limited evidence, Burns ticked every box except one: he was too eager to hit the spinners for boundaries rather than work them into the gaps for singles to rotate the strike. And the evidence was limited because it was a good batting pitch and the bowling was initially pace: the opposite of what is expected in Galle, i.e. a raging turner on which Sri Lanka start their bowling with spinners.
Root considered it far more important to make a century, as a statement that England’s batsmen have to go big, than to retire after reaching 50 as the home batsmen had done.
Ben Stokes, who had his left arm bruised by a bouncer, returned to make useful runs, while Moeen Ali hit the spinners freely in his 60, but neither Sam Curran nor Chris Woakes got a bat, and one or other will have to play in Galle if England are not to have a long tail.