Sri Lanka

England win a one-day series on the subcontinent

It’s England’s first one-day series win on the subcontinent since ages ago. Except for one they won in Bangladesh, because everyone knows that you don’t include Bangladesh in things like this. They’re not a ‘real’ team. They’re just messing about.

It’s definitely England’s first one-day series win in Sri Lanka though, which is no mean feat. England have always been pretty ordinary at one-day cricket and Sri Lanka have always been pretty good. Sri Lankan conditions usually smother England as well.

Having beaten India at home and now Sri Lanka away, England are on their best-ever one-day run as well. Probably. Weirdly and in sharp contrast to most successful modern teams, their victories have come almost exclusively in low-scoring matches.

In the India series, as soon as one team or the other passed 300, you knew the game was India’s. Conversely, if either team was bowled out for less than 300, England always won. England clearly cottoned on to this fact and promptly got bowled out for 150 in the first match of this series, but that turned out to be pushing it a bit. Since then they’ve bowled tightly and kept the pressure off their batsmen.

A nod to Ryan Sidebottom and Graeme Swann is in order here. Ryan Sidebottom rendered our lengthy article wrong as well as boring. Yes, despite our impartial language, it was pretty clear that we didn’t think he’d take wickets.

In fact, Ryan Sidebottom looked superb. At times he was really quite quick. He didn’t waste a ball and he took his wickets ridiculously cheaply for modern one-day cricket. He won’t be so successful in the Tests. (We’re only saying that to ensure that he is).

Graeme Swann achieved the unthinkable, making England fans accept that his selection ahead of Monty Panesar was a just decision. Well, he stopped us all moaning anyway, which is a form of acceptance. He might have played for England just the once before this tour, but we reckon that England A’s tour to Sri Lanka a couple of years ago stood him in good stead.

Graeme Swann the hero for England

We’ve been waiting to write that headline since March 31st last year, when we made Graeme Swann one to watch for that season. Graeme let us down then, but since being given a chance in the England side, he’s been encouragingly solid at a time when solidity has been at a premium.

4-34 is a tidy day’s work for an England spinner, even if you are in Sri Lanka. In fact being in Sri Lanka is of arguable benefit. In Sri Lanka, toddlers’ first steps typically involve coming down the pitch to off-breaks. Speaking of walking, it was nice to see Kumar Sangakkara doing so. He’s a different man to the gobby one who Nasser Hussain rapidly came to hate.

To return to Graeme Swann, he also made a nice 25 (the second highest score for England) before permitting Stuart Broad centre stage for his customary low-scoring one-dayer victory batting. Whatever the pitch, England’s batting’s still fragile in one-day cricket. Worryingly so. At least we would worry, if one-day cricket seemed at all relevant at this exact moment.

Sri Lanka v England, third one-day international at Dambulla
Sri Lanka 164 (Tillekeratne Dilshan 70, Graeme Swann 4-34, Ryan Sidebottom 3-19)
England 164 (Farveez Maharoof 3-34)
England won via Duckworth-Lewis calculations

Win the toss and bat

There’s one more match at Dambulla and so far that appears to be the best route to victory.

In the first match, Sri Lanka batted sensibly and then England were skittled. In the second match, England batted haphazardly at first, then pragmatically later, once Owais Shah got to the crease and Sri Lanka were skittled.

Is it batting under lights? Is it a coincidence? The third match will tell all. Downwards of ten people will be on the edges of their respective seats waiting to find out.

As you might be able to tell, we’re not massively interested in this match. We followed it quite closely yesterday, but Inzy’s announced his retirement today and that’s taken precedence.

Sri Lanka v England, second one-day international at Dambulla
England 234 (Owais Shah 82, Farveez Maharoof 3-30)
Sri Lanka 169

We’re a young side and we’ll learn from this

There’s not a great deal to write about England’s loss in the first one-day international against Sri Lanka yesterday.

This is partly because it’s a very ho-hum one-day series, coming about 20 minutes after the Twenty20 World Cup, which itself was hot on the heels of a seven match one-day series against India, which was overlong despite the quality of those matches.

It’s partly because when Sri Lanka play England in one-day cricket, they tend to annihilate them. But mostly not a great deal happened.

Phil Mustard made his debut and kept well and thrashed a few quick runs. Graeme Swann batted and bowled with determination on his first international outing for a good few years. Mahela Jayawardene batted smoothly, as you would expect from one of the top five (top three?) batsmen in the world.

Farveez Maharoof’s was probably the stand-out performance. His four wickets were England’s entire top order.

Probably the most notable happening was a non-happening. We’re not sure, but we don’t think that Paul Collingwood said that England were a young side and that they’d learn from this defeat. This is either welcome respite from this tired blanditude, or it’s seriously worrying as England’s younger players have opted to stop learning.

Sri Lanka v England, first one-day international at Dambulla
Sri Lanka 269-7 (Mahela Jayawardene 66)
England 150 (Farveez Maharoof 4-31)

Will Ryan Sidebottom take wickets in Sri Lanka?

We’ve written a proper article. Being as that’s totally inappropriate for this site, we’ve hidden it away off the main page.

So if you’d like to read a totally illogical article about Ryan Sidebottom worrying that he won’t take wickets in Sri Lanka on the rather spurious grounds that Chaminda Vaas, an entirely different cricketer, hasn’t taken wickets in England or India, then have a read.

We promise we’ll put something more appropriate up later today.

Dhanuka Pathirana sets the standard

We’re in the middle of the Twenty20 World Cup and what is considered acceptable batting behaviour is changing by the day.

Yuvraj Singh’s 12 ball fifty the other day is only three balls shy of the perfect half-century – the minimum number of balls required to pass the landmark. However, if he thinks that hitting six sixes off an over is impressive, he clearly doesn’t know much about Twenty20 cricket.

A couple of weeks ago, in the Saddleworth league, a player by the name of Dhanuka Pathirana played an innings of such astoundingly sustained destruction we can’t even comprehend it. It was the kind of sporting performance that doesn’t belong in cricket. It was more akin to darts or ten-pin bowling where perfection’s the norm and matches are decided by rare mistakes.

Playing for Austerlands against Droylsden, Dhanuka Pathirana hit 277 off just 72 balls. That’s a whisker away from being four runs a ball OVER 72 BALLS. If you batted for 72 balls and hit every other ball for six, you’d still only end up with 216. Pathirana hit 29 sixes and 18 fours.

Back when 20 over cricket was just ‘cricket’ this probably wouldn’t have been such big news, but now it’s ‘Twenty20′ and branded so it’s massive.

Thanks to Raoul for pointing this out to us. Ages ago.

Sri Lanka win a record

It’s the oh-so-rare 12″ version of Blue Monday by New Order.

No, not really. They just won a game by a record margin. ‘Win’ is a noun in this instance. Oh the fun of pretending that nouns are in fact verbs. Don’t say you don’t get value for money at this site.

So Sri Lanka scored lots and then Kenya didn’t score many. Sanath Jayasuriya got lots at two runs per ball; Mahela Jayawardene got slightly fewer runs at more than two runs a ball; and Jehan Mubarak got slightly fewer runs still, but at over three runs per ball.

As you can tell, we’re not really putting the effort in today.