Now that the rugby league season has finished I'm looking to diversify in my sports writing. If it goes well I'll be blog-juggling come the summer. If not it'll be as you were and nothing will be lost but pride. I've been off sick this week. Without going into the tiresome detail it's been fairly unpleasant at times and has led me to keep the kind of sleeping hours normally reserved for characters in The Deuce. A small consolation has been the fact that I have therefore been able to catch quite a bit of Sky's live coverage of England's Test series in Sri Lanka, albeit with the presence of some rather distracting stomach spasms.
The last time I wrote about cricket Alistair Cook was just about to take over as England captain from the retiring Andrew Strauss. Now Cook has also hung up the pads and England are led in Sri Lanka by Joe Root. Root is fast approaching his 28th birthday but is still referred to by my mum as 'that little boy'. There is a youthfulness about Root's look but even he was showing signs of wearying at certain points during today's fourth day of play in Kandy. Having won the first Test by 211 runs in Galle England had set the hosts a target of 301 to square the series going into the final match in Colombo. And they might yet do it. Rain has fallen at some stage of almost every day that England have been in Sri Lanka, with none of the five ODIs which preceded the Test series resolved without the aid of those two maths enthusiasts Duckworth and Lewis. When it fell today Sri Lanka were 226-7 in their second innings, just 75 short of victory.
Their problem is that seven. Those in the Duckworth-Lewis class at maths will have worked out that England therefore only need three more wickets before those 75 runs arrive to claim the win which would wrap up the series. It turns out that only four teams have put on more than 65 for the last three wickets to win a Test match in the last 100 years. The maths fun continues as I note that this equates to one every 25 years. Wheelchair accessible buses come along more often than that. Suranga Lakmal's side's hopes are slim, and rest largely on the brilliantly named wicket keeper batsman Niroshan Dickwella who is not out on 27. He's joined at the crease by Akila Dananjaya who took six wickets in England's second innings for 115 runs but is not likely to be quite as adept with the bat. After those two only Lakmal and Malinda Pushpakumara stand between England and an unassailable 2-1 series lead.
It's a strong position for England and one which has been achieved a little bit differently than you might be familiar with if you've only seen Test match cricket in English conditions. Stuart Broad has 384 Test wickets which is more than any Englishman in history other than James Anderson, yet the Nottinghamshire man has not been called into the XI for either of the first two Tests. It's a spinner's paradise where even Anderson seems to toil. The Burnley Lara has bowled only five overs in this Sri Lankan run chase. He bowled only 14 in the first innings and is wicketless in the match. The heavy lifting has been done by the spin trio of Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid and Jack Leach. The latter has four of the seven wickets to fall in the second Sri Lankan knock while Moeen has two including the prize scalp of Angelo Matthews for 88. The former Sri Lankan skipper, sacked in September amid the kind of political infighting which makes the crumbling Tory cabinet look strong and stable, was posing a genuine threat to the target before Moeen had him trapped in front with the aid of cricket's zany VAR equivalent DRS. It's another column by itself but basically DRS depends heavily on what the umpire thinks rather than concerning itself with matters of fact. With DRS you can be in or out, but if you're not in or out by enough then a technically incorrect decision won't be changed. They're looking for the 'howler'. I'd say they've found it.
Anderson and Broad were never going to go on forever but all this spinnery has me wondering whether we might be edging ever closer to a new England era without them. At 36 and 32 respectively how long do they realistically have left at the highest level? On the other hand if Theresa May is still Prime Minister in the current climate we could see the pair play on as long as WG Grace. Legend has it the great man was out many times but refused to go on the basis that he was the man that people had paid to see, not some upstart bowler who had just skittled him for a duck.
Assuming that's not possible who is going to replace them? Sam Curran has picked up a side strain and has only bowled four overs in this match, but has shown in his brief, six-match Test career that he has something of the Flintoff/Botham about him while Ben Stokes is already one of the world's best all-rounders when he's not forcefully disagreeing with members of the public at the weekend. Pace and seam will be needed when England host the World Cup and an Ashes series in the summer of 2019 but whether the prolific duo's creaking bodies can carry them that far is a question the England selectors have to find the right answer to. A summer with no international football tournament always puts a brighter spotlight on the fortunes of the England cricket team. Even more so when the Cricket World Cup and the Aussies are in town. We're not really counting the Nations League as an international tournament by the way, as much as I enjoy the mouth-frothing reaction to an international break of those who can't live without Bournemouth v Watford).
You'll be glad to know that I'm feeling a lot better than I was earlier in the week which means that my body is mercifully unlikely to wake me up in time to witness the denouement of this Test match live. Play on day five will start at 4.15am UK time on Sunday morning and it would be a major surprise if 75 runs or three wickets haven't been knocked off by the time I'm rolling out of bed. But I will be following events as quickly as I can after the cornflakes and look forward to your company as we trawl together through England's routine success/humbling inability to get through the tail end/delete as appropriate.
No comments:
Post a Comment