By Three Lions
January 14 2021

England in control after day one.

England ended day one only 8 runs behind Sri Lanka and with 8 wickets still in hand as they look to take the game beyond Sri Lanka on day two.

There were no real surprises to the England team other than perhaps no Jimmy Anderson. But that shouldn’t be seen as much of a surprise really given England’s new rotation policy with the seamers and the fact that only one of Broad or Anderson was likely to be selected given the need for spin in Sri Lanka.

So England line up as: Crawley, Sibley, Bairstow, Root, Lawrence, Buttler, S Curran, Bess, Broad, Leach, Wood.

Having bowled Sri Lanka out for 135, England ended the day on 127/2 with Root unbeaten on 66 and Bairstow unbeaten on 47 having lost both Sibley and Crawley cheaply.

The Sri Lankan batsmen failed to trouble the scorers in general with a high score of 28 for the skipper Chandimal.

The pick of England’s bowling in terms of wickets was Dom Bess who came away with 5/30 and possibly cementing his position as England’s number one spinner when we are back home and only one will be selected.

Leach bowled well but without the luck of Bess to finish with figures of 1/55.

The pick of the bowlers however for me was Stuart Broad who set the tone from the very beginning to finish with 3/20 in a country where he has previously struggled and one which suits spin far more than seam.

Curran and Wood only sent down a combined 10 overs as Bess and Leach took on most of the bowling. I know this isn’t really the surface to judge Wood but I think this on every type of surface in test cricket, and that is that he always looks good but very rarely gets the rewards he deserves in terms of wickets. Eventually in this format his stats need to improve otherwise England might begin to deem him a one day bowler.

Bairstow batted like a true number three and few big scores here will cement him in that position for the foreseeable future.

That will put pressure on Crawley, Sibley and Burns who will then be battling it out for only two spots as openers.

For me only Root and Stokes are better batsmen than Bairstow for England in this format at the moment so you have got to find a way to get him back in to the team somehow and number 3 might be the spot. He makes no secret of his desire to keep wicket as well but he could only do that batting at 6 or 7 and Buttler is the man in that position at the moment and deservedly so after the back end of the summer where before that he was on the brink of being dropped.

If Lawrence does well then England will have big decisions to make when Pope comes back in to the equation. Pope looks a class act from what I have witnessed so far in his short test career but Lawrence may be just as good now that he has the chance to prove himself.

It was good to see the skipper get a good score and hopefully he can convert it in to a century to get the stat off his back that he hasn’t had one in over a year.

Sri Lanka v England Match Thread

Discussion started by England Cricket (IP Logged), 14/01/2021 14:29

England Cricket
14/01/2021 14:29

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