- Day one report: England dominant after skittling Sri Lanka
- The 80s and 90s Cricket Show: podcast relives England’s nadir
- And you can email Tim here or tweet @TimdeLisle
Morning everyone. The pandemic has done funny things to us all. Some have grown their hair, others have applied to join the Stasi, and other still have become vulnerable to modest off-breaks purveyed by bouncy young Englishmen. After winning the toss on a turning pitch beneath Galle’s famous fort, the Sri Lankans collapsed like a sandcastle and handed Dom Bess a sensational five for 30, which even he admitted that he didn’t deserve. Stuart Broad’s three for 20 was, by common consent, a much better performance.
England wobbled too, but only briefly, before Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow showed how it’s done with an unbroken partnership of 110. For Dinesh Chandimal, Sri Lanka’s stand-in captain, the task is simple: get rid of them both early on, and stop England’s lead reaching three figures. For Root, it’s even simpler: find 34 more runs to score a Test hundred for the first time in the 2020s. And then add some more, to pile up a lead of 200 and have a fair chance of an innings victory. It would not be unlike England to stage a collapse of their own. They can’t just carry on serenely from the whitewash of 2018, can they?
@TimdeLisle I believe I have perfected the ‘putting the eyes into deliberate unfocused state’ in order to go back to the start of obo so as not to ruin the suspense when catching up at work and England playing unsociable hours.
