Sri Lanka are outclassed as Buttler closes on Test place
Batsman’s quickfire 70 helps seal 3-0 whitewash Roy is man of series but no joy for out-of-form Morgan
England’s first Super-Series for men – an idea borrowed from England Women – has not been close. After England won the fifth international by 122 runs, the score stands at 18-4 with a T20 international to come on Tuesday evening before Sri Lanka end their damp squib of a tour.
Both in the Test and 50-over formats, Sri Lanka simply have not had the firepower to dismiss England. A damp morning and greenish pitch in Cardiff made for a good time to bowl, but the touring seamers were so bland that England’s batsmen were seldom tested and posted a match-winning total of 324, even though Jos Buttler alone was at his best.
During this series England’s oneday cricket has grown nicely, even allowing for opponents who could not penetrate with the ball or build major individual innings let alone partnerships.
None more so than Jason Roy, with his two centuries scored at a rattling rate and, what is more, with relatively low risk as he played most of his big hits with a straightish bat.
In the fifth game, Roy departed from his script to slogsweep into the wind, but he had still scored 316 runs off only 264 balls, making him the man of the series. Anyone who had thought he was little more than an upmarket pinch-hitter content with 30s and 40s has been gravely mistaken, Roy’s hunger to improve no less manifest in his fielding when he berates himself for a misfield. “A very convincing performance and there was no let-up at all really,” England’s captain, Eoin Morgan, said. “To perform like that – given that there wasn’t a great deal on the game – I think sums the desire within the group.” The principle disappointment in this series has been Morgan’s aggregate of 84 runs in three innings. After a runfamine in his previous one-day series in South Africa, and in the World T20 finals, he sowed a few seeds but never stayed around to reap. Morgan is worth 20 runs to England as a captain in the field, so astute is his bowling strategy – without any senior seamer such as James Anderson and Stuart Broad to advise him – and his bowling changes. But he has not reached 50 in his eight ODIs this calendar year and, in next year’s Champions Trophy, a space has to be found for another left-handed batsman, and one who can also bowl – Ben Stokes. Ironically, it was not by mis-hitting the ball, but by middling it too well, that Morgan was caught at deep cover when he drove downwind. This came after the bold start by Roy and James Vince, and during a mildly disturbing period when England could not come up with an answer to the problem of Danushka Gunathilaka, who had previously taken two wickets in ODIs. One answer to Gunathilaka’s slow off-breaks – often non-turning – from round the wicket would have been to smack them over long-on. But Vince, intent on another of the handsome coverdrives that had featured in his fine maiden ODI 50, was artlessly stumped, and Jonny Bairstow pulled out of a six over long-on, leaving Joe Root to work the off-spinner through midwicket.
Root never found his timing on a pitch that slowed as it dried, but his ability to manoeuvre the ball allowed him to flesh out his six fours with 57 singles. Morgan on-drove one six to make him the first to hit 100 sixes in one-dayers for England, but it was Buttler who had to do the accelerating, for which he was man of the match.
Whereas normal batsmen are contained by a ball in the blockhole, Buttler has patented a method of stepping back and powering yorkers through mid-off with an almost horizontal swing and steely wrists. Lancashire do not have a championship game before the first Test, but, as Morgan said: “He’s more than capable of getting back into the Test team at some stage.”
Jonny Bairstow’s brilliance as a fielder is almost beginning to tell against him in his cause of keeping wicket. In the fourth ODI, it was a diving run-out from cover, here it was a fast flat throw into the strident wind that achieved England’s seventh run-out of this series, against one by Sri Lanka.
After Bairstow had run out Kusal Mendis to break the nearest Sri Lanka came to a partnership, it was a procession of wickets. Enjoying the variety which he has at his disposal – more than any other one-day captain England has had – Morgan paired Liam Plunkett’s pace and Adil Rashid’s everincreasing amount of varieties.
Rashid conceded less than five runs an over in this series, a superb economy rate against a country that plays spin well; Plunkett joined David Willey in being the most penetrative bowler with 10 wickets. It is a pity that Pakistan, England’s next opposition, are ninth in the world ODI rankings.