MATCH STORY
Follow UsSri Lanka’s head coach Sanath Jayasuriya pointed out Sri Lanka’s batting as their stronger suit for the three-match Test series in England. “We have an experienced batting order. They have all played a lot of cricket. We have the personnel there, but we need to fight hard,” he said in an interview with ESPNCricinfo.
Jayasuriya wasn’t wrong. Sri Lanka have Dimuth Karunaratne, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Dhananjaya de Silva, who have played 396 Tests put together, with all of them playing over 50 Tests. Karunaratne, Mathews and Chandimal are on their third Test tour of England.
However, Jayasuriya’s hopes came crashing down when Sri Lanka were 6/3 in seven overs after opting to bat first. The wickets kept falling with intermittent partnerships and within 34 overs, the Lankans were 113/7.
The first four aforementioned names managed only 43 runs between them, although you would feel bad for Chandimal who batted well for his 17 runs before receiving a delivery that barely got off the ground. It was Dhananjaya de Silva, the only batter in this experienced pool with no experience of Test cricket in England, who saved the day for the visitors.
Playing a captain’s knock, de Silva top scored with 74 off 84 deliveries. With the help of the debutant Milan Rathnayake, he led Sri Lanka from 40/4 at the point of his arrival to 176/8 when he fell to Shoaib Bashir.
Bowled out for 236, Sri Lanka batted at only 3.2 runs per over. De Silva scored at a strike rate of 88.1 (5.3 runs per over). He neutralized Chris Woakes (14 runs from 11 balls) who had bowled a double-wicket maiden in the first hour of day’s play. 49% of his runs against pace came square of the wicket.
He was 30 off his first 30 balls but slowed down later on as Rathnayake showed promise of fighting it out at the other end. The duo added 63 runs for the eighth wicket to restore some semblance to the innings.
De Silva has averaged 60.1 in Test cricket since 2023. He was appointed as the Test skipper after a staggering 2023 where he hammered 486 runs @ 60.8. The 32-year-old is one of the best number six batters going on, averaging 65.2 at that spot batting 14 of his 17 innings in this period. It is the best average for a number six batter (minm. five innings).
The right-hander has scored heavily overseas, averaging 68.3 with three fifties and two hundreds. Those numbers could have been even better had he not missed out on two fifties (46 & 47* in Christchurch) and a hundred (98 in Wellington) in New Zealand. He amassed twin hundreds in Bangladesh, following it up with a 70 in the second Test.
The skipper added to his impressive overseas performances with a valiant 74 to keep Sri Lanka in the game. He would be disappointed to not convert it into a triple-digit score given he was in full control. The fact that he fell to a soft dismissal – dabbing Bashir to leg slip — would hurt even more. Jayasuriya talked about batters converting their time at the crease into a big score. De Silva missed that opportunity with Rathnayake going strong at the other end.
However, the skipper was among the only two silver linings for the visitors on a gloomy day in Manchester. Their best batter of late has brought his overseas charisma to England now. And knowing this is a three-Test series, they would need him quite a lot in this series.
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