Sri Lanka v England, 2011-12
Dean Wilson
Test matches (2): Sri Lanka 1, England 1
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England tour of Sri Lanka
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Noel Coward may have had a point when he wrote about mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun - even if he wasn't necessarily thinking of Sri Lanka in April. But in scorching temperatures, England were as heroic in squaring the series in Colombo as they had been flaky while losing at Galle. If the mercury told a relentless tale, England's own gauge fluctuated wildly: few sides could have made Asian conditions look both baffling and straightforward within the space of a week as expertly as they did.
They began this brief tour - just two Tests and no limited-overs matches - still smarting from a 3-0 defeat by Pakistan in the UAE, where their travails against spin had been exposed alarmingly. Despite that trauma, they were still favourites to secure a first series triumph in Sri Lanka for 11 years. On paper, a contest between a Sri Lankan team yet to win a home Test since the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan, and an England side still ranked No. 1, with a bowling attack in rude health and batsmen who surely couldn't keep failing, would provide only one winner. And yet cricket, as the old pros have it, is played not on paper but on grass - and sometimes on slow turners, where England discovered that Sri Lanka did not need Murali to tie them in knots.
As it was, a 1-1 draw felt about right once the efforts of Mahela Jayawardene, Rangana Herath, Kevin Pietersen and Graeme Swann were stacked up. But, for the third time in the 2011-12 season alone, a high-profile two-Test series was left crying out for a decider. The ECB had wanted a third match, but the hard-up Sri Lankan board had other concerns, so the series was squeezed into a narrow window between the lucrative Asia Cup, whose TV money pleased the administrators, and the IPL, whose contracts placated the players. Test cricket, the sport's so-called jewel in the crown, was once again being treated like a mere bauble.
With equal predictability, it was the arrival of several thousand British tourists that provided Sri Lanka Cricket with their best gate receipts in years. Australian fans the previous September had paid 500 rupees (about £2.50) for their daily tickets. Now, SLC charged travelling supporters ten times as much in the knowledge that - though many had budgeted for far less - enough of them would be prepared, however grudgingly, to fork out. And so it proved: both the Galle International Stadium and the P. Sara Oval in Colombo were packed to the rafters, even if locals - who had access to poorly advertised tickets at 50 rupees each - were disconcertingly hard to spot.
Many England fans, though, voted with their feet, and instead formed a makeshift terrace on the ramparts of the Galle Fort, from where they could watch the First Test at a distance. Access was free - or at least it was until the final day, when a local politician attempted to charge a 1,000-rupee entry fee on the pretext of holding a party which was not due to start until the evening.
The opportunism left a sour taste - as did the litter left behind by spectators on the ramparts - and not everyone made the trip north to Colombo; those who did had no choice but to pay over the odds once more. The consolation - or possibly the saving grace - came in the form of two absorbing Tests. Central to the plot was Jayawardene, who registered his fifth and sixth hundreds at home against England, a figure bettered only by Don Bradman, with eight. Such was his brilliance in both games that his performance might have been considered career-defining had he not already defined it many times over. Never before, though, had he walked out in successive first innings on a hat-trick. Twice he calmly dealt with an on-song James Anderson - and twice he went on to score centuries. His 180 at Galle may have been an even finer innings than his unbeaten 213 there against England in December 2007, and only when Swann winkled him out on the final morning in Colombo could the tourists feel confident of squaring the series.
Sri Lanka's victory in the First Test owed just as much to the left-arm spin of Herath. With England apparently opting for a policy of sweep or bust - and often both - he needed to do little more than bowl straight: tentative batting and the presence of the Decision Review System did the rest. Herath's 12 wickets surpassed anything Muralitharan had managed in ten home Tests against England, who were spared a greater thrashing only by Jonathan Trott's sensible and unhurried 112.
At Galle, Swann had been accompanied by Monty Panesar and the debutant Samit Patel - the nearest England had come to selecting a trio of front-line spinners since 1987-88, when Nick Cook, John Emburey and Eddie Hemmings all played at Faisalabad. Yet it was Anderson who shone brightest, even though Sri Lanka were allowed to wriggle free from 15 for 3 in the first innings and 14 for 3 in the second. For once, England's fielding was ragged.
Four Test defeats in a row left Andrew Strauss under pressure before the final match of the winter. Not only were his team losing, but his own form had been patchy; another defeat would cost them their No. 1 status. At the Sara, where England had contested Sri Lanka's inaugural Test 30 years earlier, Strauss's bowlers were thwarted for a while by Jayawardene. But the England captain and his opening partner Alastair Cook left the sweep back in the dressing-room, and proceeded to play as smartly as Trott had done at Galle. Strauss's steady 61 removed some of the heat - metaphorically, at least - and allowed him to sit back and enjoy the batting of Pietersen.
An innings of 151 from 165 balls would have been beyond most of his contemporaries. Throw in a smattering of controversial switch hits, and Pietersen's batting entered the realms of the unique. Swann's second-innings haul of six for 106, to give him ten wickets in the match, ensured he ended the winter as he began it - ahead of Panesar, who had threatened his status as England's go-to spinner with 14 wickets in two Tests in the UAE. Tim Bresnan, meanwhile, the man who replaced Panesar in Colombo, could now celebrate 11 Test wins out of 11.
Above all, the win - only England's second in Asia against a team other than Bangladesh since the 2-1 victory in Sri Lanka in 2000-01 - ensured they would finish a disappointing Test winter still the world's top-ranked team. It had not been easy. But then, for England on the subcontinent, it rarely is.
Match reports for
Tour Match: Sri Lanka Board XI v England XI at Colombo (RPS), Mar 15-17, 2012
Report |
Scorecard
Tour Match: Sri Lanka Cricket Development XI v England XI at Colombo (SSC), Mar 20-22, 2012
Report |
Scorecard
1st Test: Sri Lanka v England at Galle, Mar 26-29, 2012
Report |
Scorecard
2nd Test: Sri Lanka v England at Colombo (PSS), Apr 3-7, 2012
Report |
Scorecard
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