Series has been marked by Sri Lanka fightbacks, but only because of catastrophic top five
Vithushan Ehantharajah30-Aug-20240:59
Kamindu Mendis hasn’t given up hope of Test fightback
Milan Rathnayake dropped his hands, crouched, swayed and did not turn his back on the ball. And yet having done pretty much everything right, he still ended up wearing Olly Stone’s bouncer flush on the grille.Stone, closely followed by the rest of the England team, checked to see if he was okay before the Sri Lanka physio ran on for a more thorough assessment. Once the concussion protocols were administered – and passed – Rathnayake shaped up again. Stone bumped him again. This time he ducked, turned his head, closed his eyes and prayed as the ball cannoned into his gloves.The bowling allrounder lasted just two more balls, eventually walking back up to the away dressing-room in the Lord’s pavilion, to which Sri Lanka’s top six had already returned the best part of 10 overs beforehand. This is Rathnayake’s second Test, and so the experience probably still fresh, new and exciting. But he would have been within his rights to throw his arms in the air once he got back to his senior batters and ask, “lads – any chance?”Sri Lanka’s first innings was only 29 overs old with his dismissal, but they were already seven-down and trailing by 309 runs. Rathanayake had arrived at six-down, with just 87 on the board. Though he was unable to do as he had done in last week’s first Test, Kamindu Mendis, their second-innings hero in Manchester, mustered 74 to provide the faint silver lining on this particular mushroom cloud of a batting performance. That England did not enforce the follow-on with a lead of 231 was out of comfort for their bowlers rather than convenience.Nothing, though, was ever going to cover for yet another top-order failure. One that looks a whole lot worse when you win the toss and decide to bowl in pristine batting conditions, asking an attack who had never previously toured England before to take ten wickets when the sun is out and the cloud spotless. Oh – and having dropped the only bloke with any previous experience on these shores. The least you could do in that situation is give them a bit of time off and get somewhere near 400. That was the whole point of asking the hosts to go first, right?Dimuth Karunaratne was out chopping on, for 7•Getty ImagesThe small crumb of comfort for Dhananjaya de Silva , who made that call at 10:30am on Thursday morning, was that at least his dismissal for a four-ball duck was one of the more excusable. Even so, as the skipper was squared up by Matthew Potts on the downward slope, you did wonder if he had to commit as much as he did to an attempted push into the leg side. Some of his fellow experienced batters, however, warrant further scrutiny.Dimuth Karunaratne, an opener regarded as one of the steadiest accumulators in the game, has been collecting only regrets these last two weeks. The latest being diverting a delivery from outside off onto his own stumps when it was always going across him, with lunch due at the end of the over. Angelo Mathews, while brilliantly picked off by Potts, had been too accommodating to the Durham quick. Four of the seven dot-balls he faced, before the knockout blow that squared him up to clip the top of off, could have been worked away for singles, either through cover or off the legs. Something – anything – to elicit a change in length. As for Dinesh Chandimal, only a note on his pillow last night would have offered him more notice than Ollie Pope waving Dan Lawrence into a catching position just behind square leg.That trio were not the only ones deserving of criticism. Pathum Nissanka was also guilty of failing to clock a field shift, working the ball so confidently to leg slip that he even added a little flick of the wrist as a flourish. But Karunaratne, Mathews and Chandimal are all on their third tour of England. And while you can talk about gaining experience in county cricket, playing more warm-up matches and addressing financial inequality, sometimes it’s just about doing better because you really should know better.Even with only one match against a mish-mashed England Lions – which they lost, by the way – the squad has had a decent build-up to this series, with some in situ as early as August 6. Other decisions also warrant an explanation. It’s one thing to give Nishan Madushka the gloves – even if he is only the third-best keeper in the squad – but persisting with him as an opener, despite the fact Nissanka is better equipped to do so outright, was a tad confusing. When Madushka walked out at 12:18pm to start the reply to England’s 427, having kept for 102 overs, it looked like an elaborate joke.Milan Rathnayake ducks into a short delivery from Olly Stone•AFP/Getty ImagesEven as you are reading this, there is probably some pen-pusher at Sri Lanka Cricket’s head office, inside the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo, who has been ordered to fire up his computer and open that file labelled “Guys, what the hell? – Bad Tour Review Template, DO NOT DELETE.doc”. A few of those columns have probably already been filled.Sri Lanka’s top five are currently boasting a combined average of 19.26, the third-lowest for a visiting side to England in 50 years. In that same period, across first innings alone, only Bangladesh’s top five in 2005 have averaged less than Sri Lanka’s 11.80 in 2024. Unsurprisingly, this is the worst first-innings performance from a Sri Lanka top five in any series of two Tests or more.We are only halfway through this series, even if it feels like this second Test – and series – has just one more meaningful day to go. And there is a world where Sri Lanka fight back in their second innings as they did last week.But just as was the case then, they probably won’t as far as the result is concerned because of how badly their most trusted batters have botched the first.