Sri Lanka have been here in England for a while, playing some games, ready for the first test match next Thursday at Headingly.
England today released details of their 12 man squad, including two new names for the tests, James Vince and Jake Ball. The squad is:
Alastair Cook,
Alex Hales,
Nick Compton,
Joe Root,
James Vince,
Ben Stokes,
Johnny Bairstow,
Moeen Ali,
Stuart Broad,
Steven Finn,
James Anderson,
Jake Ball.
James Vince is presumably a direct replacement for James Taylor, after his enforced retirement with a heart problem. Jake Ball may well carry the drinks.
No Ballance, no Robson, no Bell. Probably not that surprising, but those three may well be wondering if they will play again.
edit: Ballance and Bell are both in the 30 man “performance squad” that England have also annouced.
I think it’s likely that Ball carries the drinks, just because the management like continuity - but if what I have seen at a couple of grounds this year (either in person or on the TV) is what the selectors are seeing, he should be playing instead of Finn, who looks well out of sorts. Both he and Compton are lucky to be in the squad, imo.
I am desperate for Hales to find some sort of form in red ball cricket. Someone who can vary the pace of batting in our top 3 is important I think - and I don’t want them to move Root from 4 (on the grounds that it isn’t broken, so don’t try to fix it). Both Hales and Compton could do with a good summer, to be honest. Likewise, Moeen. The remainder of the squad (even Ball, who has been performing well for a while and doesn’t get injured like Mark Wood) will likely be there or thereabouts for a while.
I said at the time he would bounce back - will be interesting to see how he performs. A fivefer and a half century in the first Test would be my guess.
So, day one of the first time, and England back where they apparently like to be, 100/5. Although it’s now tea, they are 171/5 and beginning to look more respectable.
Raining at the moment, we’ll see if they come out again.
I thought Compton got a good delivery, looked like it was shaping to hit the top of off so he had to play, moved off the seam enough to take the edge and was caught. Everyone else was varying shades of culpable. The conditions weren’t ideal for batting but Hales and Bairstow proved it was possible with application. If Bairstow keeps this up, I am going to have to reverse my opinion of him as the Ginger Ramprakash pretty sharpish. Pleased for Hales too.
Sri Lanka were tight and bowled well, even though I think the English chucked them some wickets. They had a good day until it all got a bit loose once Bairstow got set. If they can remove these two soon tomorrow, can’t see England scoring much north of 250 and then it’s game on.
Good to have Test Cricket back. Shame that barely any one turned up. The long form of the game is truly fucked if even England can’t keep selling the games out - the one country that manages it on the regular (albeit in much smaller grounds than in Oz). The London games have pretty much sold out for the summer but ticket sales elsewhere - particularly Durham for the next Test - are pretty awful.
299 for England; 27-3 Sri Lanka as Broad and Anderson bowl in favourable conditions.
Not sure you’re right about Durham - I had a quick look on their website of curiousity and a vague notion about booking train tickets: there’s only a few small sections with seats available.
As of 4 days ago, sales are lower than 30 thousand for the Durham Test. That means that they’re pulling in fewer punters at the moment than will turn up for one day of the Lord’s Tests. The Oval Test against Pakistan has virtually sold out.
Now they might have sold a lot in the last few days on the grounds that this has now been well publicised and people realise that tickets are available but the general trend is pretty negative. Fewer than 10k were at Headingley yesterday - not ideal and far fewer than turn up for T20 County matches at Headingley.
The attendances for Test match cricket at some grounds in England are definitely on the slide. I don’t blame the grounds in question for some of this. The blind bidding process for Test matches that grounds have to go through in this country is stupid (And Colin Graves said as much in his interview broadcast yesterday with Atherton). Durham were royally fucked by Headingley getting the Test immediately prior to theirs - as Durham can usually rely on at least some people from Yorkshire travelling to them to see an international. Not if the opportunity to do so is closer and the week before though. Not that Durham could have know this when they bid for the Test. There’s a lot needs sorting out on this.
Stokes took another - 4 down now. These sort of conditions are the English equivalent of a hot, humid sky above and a dustbowl underfoot. Our bowlers are in their element.
Good pitch this, I think. You can score runs if you apply yourself, but there’s something in it for the seamers, and England have a clutch of very, very good seamers at the moment.
Anderson now has 435 wickets, 6th in list, just ahead of Kapil Dev.
I think it might be the overhead conditions rather than the pitch to be honest. I’d like to see what would happen if the sun came out for an extended spell. Still this is Yorkshire. In May. Little chance of that.
Anderson now taken the 3rd most wickets by a seam up bowler ever. He’s a long way behind McGrath and Walsh mind - and his average is substantially worse. A victory for staying fit for a long time potentially.
And Mathews actually wasn’t out according to Haweye - but he didn’t call for a review.
He asked the guy at the other end and he said he should keep walking. So it might show that the guy at the other end isn’t a good judge of whether the ball hit in line - mind you, he’ll be off the other side of the wicket, so won’t have the best of angles on it.
9 needed to avoid the follow on! 8 down! I’d think this might be one of those occasions that they do actually enforce the follow on, too, it’s great conditions for bowling.
105/6, looks like only the weather may stop England from winning this today. James Anderson bowling really well, just putting it up there and asking the batsmen to cope, and they generally haven’t.
And, after 160 overs, this match has finished, England winning by an innings and 88 runs. The last 7 SL wickets fell for 26 runs.
There has been some perfect conditions for swing bowling, though, and England have two of the best swing bowlers of the era opening at the moment. Props as well to Johnny Bairstow and Hales for holding the England batting together on the first day.
Bairstow Man of the Match. Fair enough, given he’s the only one in the test who looked like he knew how to bat.
Let’s not get carried away. A first Test in conditions that massively favoured England’s swing bowlers coupled with perilously few warm-up matches. That’s bad preparation, no doubt, but there’s no reason to believe that Sri Lanka will never play well abroad ever again.
I certainly hope not. I’ve got tickets for the 4th day at Lord’s and I am not sanguine about how much, if any, cricket we’ll be seeing. But there’s time for Sri Lanka to get at least a little more accustomed to the conditions.
If you took the best two batsmen out of any side in the world, they’d probably struggle. Over the last 5 years, SL have lost several of a golden generation on both the bowling and the batting side. This is going to be a tough few years and they’re going to have to learn a lot on the job likely.
I thought Mendis looked promising with the bat in this game. Let’s not forget that they also had England 83-5 at one point in this game so there may be promise with the ball too (granted, England didn’t bat well but you’ve still got to take the wickets). I’d agree that this is a perilously small and slanted sample size though. Let’s see how they do over the course of the whole tour - ODIs included.
