Former England batter Mark Butcher slammed the Three Lions for their “slapdash, gung ho” batting against Sri Lanka in the third Test of the recently-concluded series, saying that they aided Lankan Lions in their victory through their poor batting. Though Sri Lanka offered moments of fight and resilience, they lost the three-match Test series to England 2-1, but not without handing the hosts a painful eight-wicket loss at The Oval on Monday, their first-ever to the Island nation in 10 years at home and just fourth against them at home.
On day one, England were at 221/3, but were bundled out for 325 due to their excessively aggressive shot making. Sri Lanka responded with a decent 263 and skittled out the hosts for just 156 runs in their second innings, thanks to fine spells from Lahiru Kumara (4-21) and Vishwa Fernando (3-40). Sri Lanka had a target of 219 runs to chase, which they knocked down easily thanks to a century from Pathum Nissanka (127*).
Speaking on the Wisden Cricket Podcast, Butcher said, “I have to say England’s batting on both occasions was end of term, gung ho, slapdash, all the bad adjectives that you could come up with about the way that England played from day two onwards in the match really. So they [Sri Lanka] were aided and abetted by a team that kind of played as though the victory was a foregone conclusion and kind of went at it like that.”
Butcher said that what annoyed him the most was that England were playing in a very pragmatic manner in their previous Test matches and batted according to game situations.
“And then you know once you had earned the right to be a bit more expansive and go back to Bazball 1.0 then do it. But the lead was only 60, the ball was moving around and they kind of came out and played like they had 260 on the board instead,” he added.
Butcher also lauded Lankan bowlers for their fine bowling, dismissing Joe Root and Harry Brook with fine inswingers. He said that though England have made strides in cutting down ” unnecessary risk-taking”, they still managed to lose the match despite being in commanding positions.
“Then Sri Lanka as we have mentioned before bowled brilliantly, knocking over Joe Root and Harry Brook with two in swingers. Vishwa Fernando, who up until this test match or that afternoon anyway had looked absolutely insipid as a left-arm swing bowler. And suddenly before you know it, you are in big big trouble,” said the former player.
“That’s what’s annoyed me really, the fact that they actually made strides to kind of remove that sort of unnecessary risk-taking from the game in order to get the job done, get themselves into a position where they were infallible and were going win it and that. I hope that has annoyed them too,” he concluded.
Coming to the third match, Sri Lanka won the toss and opted to field first. England was bowled out for 325 runs in the first innings, with contributions from Ollie Pope (154 in 156 balls, with 19 fours and two sixes) and Ben Duckett (86 in 79 balls, with nine fours and two sixes) taking England to a solid score.
Key highlights of the innings were a 95-run partnership for the second wicket between Duckett and Pope and latters’ half-century stands with Joe Root (13) and Harry Brook (19), in which Pope did the majority of the scoring.
Milan Rathnayake (3/56) was a top bowler for SL. Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, and Dhananjaya de Silva got two wickets each.
In the first innings, Lankan Lions lost wickets at regular intervals. SL was reeling at 93/5 at one point, but a fine 127-run partnership between Dhananjaya de Silva, the skipper (69 in 111 balls, with 11 fours) and Kamindu Mendis (64 in 91 balls, with seven fours) took SL to 263, trailing by 62 runs. Pathum Nissanka had contributed 64 in 51 balls, with nine fours at the top, but did not get support from his batting partners.
Olly Stone (3/35) and Josh Hull (3/53) were the top bowlers for England. Chris Woakes got two scalps, and Shoaib Bashir got one wicket.
In the England’s second innings, Lankan bowlers asserted their dominance. Other than a half-century by Jamie Smith (67 in 50 balls, with 10 fours and a six), nothing really stood out.
England was reduced to 82/7 at one point, but then Jamie launched a counter-attack with some solid support from Stone (10), in which wicketkeeper-batter displayed his free-flowing strokeplay and immense game awareness while batting with the tail.
England was bowled out for 156 runs, and England set 219 runs to win for Sri Lanka.
Lahiru (4/21) was the top bowler for SL, while Vishwa (3/40) got key wickets of Root, Brook and Jamie. Asitha Fernando took 2/49 in 12 overs while Milan got one wicket.
Sri Lanka lost Dimuth Karunaratne early during the run-chase. But Pathum Nissanka stitched a 69-run partnership with Kusal Mendis (39 in 37 balls, with seven fours) to bring the team back on track. Nissanka went on to score his second Test ton, making 127* in 124 balls, with 13 fours and two sixes. All-rounder Angelo Mathews was also unbeaten at 32 in 61 balls, with three fours.
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