Key events
14th over: England 67-2 (Duckett 37, Root 11) Rathanayake returns and gives Duckett some trouble. First he fends at a lifter, finding only thin air, then he scoops the ball in the air towards cover and picks up a streaky two. But Duckett survives and, in Tests at Lord’s, he now averages 100.
13th over: England 65-2 (Duckett 35, Root 11) The first ball after drinks brings a poor shot from Duckett, wafting outside off as Kumara moves the ball away down the slope. But he gets his act together with a dab for two and a cover-drive for four, flipped with a flourish.
And here’s Kim Thonger. “Checking in from a car park in Shepton Mallet, Somerset,” he writes, “waiting my wife’s re-emergence after her audit of the inventory in a certain well-known fashion brand’s factory shop. I shan’t mention the name directly but it’s associated with marmalade. Anyway, it’s showering slightly, appropriate since we are opposite Showering’s, the makers of Babycham, the go-to drink of my early girlfriends. It was either that or a snowball in the 70s. Those were the options. End of.
“It makes me wonder whether the wonderful Wurzels ever did a version of the Oasis song you mentioned, titled Babycham Supernova? If they didn’t they should have done. And followed it with Ciderwall.”
12th over: England 58-2 (Duckett 28, Root 11) Fernando continues and so do the runs – two singles to each batter. They’re both so busy and yet so relaxed. And that’s drinks, which is Sky’s chance to torment us with that awful ad that Stuart Broad agreed to appear in in a moment of madness.
It’s been an hour of two halves – the first all England, as Duckett took charge, the second belonging to Sri Lanka as Dhananjaya de Sliva hit back with two wily bowling changes. And now Duckett and Root are threatening to take back control. Ebb and flow, you can’t beat it.
11th over: England 54-2 (Duckett 26, Root 9) It will take more than a couple of wickets to bother Ben Duckett. Facing Kumara, he plays a pull for two and a flick for a single. Root, getting forward nicely, adds a straight push for four. and a glance for another single. Between them, these two have cruised to 35 off 34 balls, while the other two batters scraped 10 off 32.
10th over: England 46-2 (Duckett 23, Root 4) Joe Root runs to the middle and clips his first ball for four. But that won’t bother the Sri Lankans too much as the past quarter of an hour. belongs to them Another bowling change, another wicket. Fernando switched ends, dropped short and lured Pope into a miscued front-foot pull. As the ball sailed into the St John’s Wood skies, Dhananjaya de Silva took charge, kept calm and sent his opposite number packing. He gets credit for both wickets and now his decision to bowl doesn’t look so silly.
WICKET! Pope c de Silva b Fernando 1 (England 42-2)
One brings two! And the England captain has gone.
9th over: England 39-1 (Duckett 20, Pope 1) Kumara beats Pope again, cutting him in half like a magician, and then a third time, which brings a loud appeal for caught behind. Pope, as so often, is starting with a stutter, while Kumara (2-1-3-1) has started with a bang. “He was all smiles in practice,” says Mel Jones. “He’s all glares now.”
8th over: England 39-1 (Duckett 20, Pope 1) Pope copes better with Rathnayake, going back to flip a short one for a single. On the balcony, Ben Stokes keeps a beady eye on his understudy.
7th over: England 33-1 (Duckett 19, Pope 0) That was a four-card trick from Kumara, who kept angling the ball into Lawrence, then moved it away, up the slope. Lawrence didn’t help himself by going down the track, which left him with less time to adjust. And then Kumara beat Pope outside off too. In one over, he’s changed the complexion of the game.
WICKET! Lawrence c Madushka b Kumara 9 (England 33-1)
The breakthrough! And it’s a bowling change that makes the difference as Lahiru Kumara’s extra pace tells.
6th over: England 30-0 (Duckett 16, Lawrence 9) Rathnayake started very tidily but now the openers tuck in. Duckett clips for two and takes a leg-bye, leaving Lawrence to play a straight drive for four. That was so easy, just a push.
5th over: England 23-0 (Duckett 14, Lawrence 5) Lawrence, facing Fernando, gets lucky as an inside edge goes for four. Fun fact: Sri Lanka haven’t lost at Lord’s since Ian Botham was playing for England, back in 1991.
4th over: England 19-0 (Duckett 14, Lawrence 1) Don’t bowl wide of off to Duckett, don’t go the other way to Lawrence… Rathnayake forgets this and concedes four byes, followed by a single to get Lawrence off the mark. He made 30 and 34 in his first go as a makeshift Test opener – the kind of scores that get frowned upon, but more than anyone else in either top three managed.
3rd over: England 14-0 (Duckett 14, Lawrence 0) Hang on, Duckett has found his groove. He square-drives Fernando for four, then off-drives him for four more. Fernando recovers with a couple of dot balls, then goes too wide and lets Duckett glide a third four. He’s helped himself to 13 off seven balls from Fernando.
2nd over: England 2-0 (Duckett 2, Lawrence 0) From the Nursery End, it’s Milan Rathnayake, who made his debut last week and batted better than he bowled. He makes a steady start, starving Duckett of the width he craves until the last ball, which is chopped for another single. Two overs, two runs – someone tell Sir Geoffrey, Test creekit is back.
1st over: England 1-0 (Duckett 1, Lawrence 0) Fernando starts with a yorker, swinging into Duckett, who digs it out and steals a single. A more orthodox ball, jagging in towards Dan Lawrence’s off stump, brings an LBW appeal, but it’s too high. Are England still in the subdued mode with which they stunned us in Manchester?
The new ball is in the hands of Asitha Fernando, so impressive at Old Trafford. Waiting for him is Ben Duckett, the opener who can’t stand playing no stroke.
As the anthems are played, we get a close look at both sides. If it was a competition to see who had more stubble, the Sri Lankans would be heading for an easy win.
The bell is rung by Mahela Jayawardene. He didn’t just make heaps of stylish runs for one of these nations: he went on to work as a batting consultant for the other.
On Sky, the first Oasis song of the day is ringing out. “It’s Lord’s, we’ve gotta go for Champagne Supernova, haven’t we?”
The first email has landed and it’s from our old friend Gary Naylor. “I suspect that there will not be swathes of empty seats on the fourth day – if MCC prices tickets correctly,” he says. “Fifth day ticket prices is something that cricket has got right in recent years and surely the flexibility shown with cut-price seats should extend to other days if advance sales look thin? After all, the overheads are fixed and there’s money to be made on the merch and refreshments. No doubt people who paid ‘full price’ weeks ago might quibble, but that’s the nature of the beast.” Hmm, flexibility … not always MCC’s middle name.
The teams
As both captains showed their hand yesterday, it’s a Radiohead team sheet: no surprises. Olly Stone replaces the injured Mark Wood, while Sri Lanka make two changes – Pathum Nissanka for Kusal Mendis, to try and avoid being 6 for 3; and Lahiru Kamara for Vishwa Fernando, to add weight to the seam bowling.
England 1 Ben Duckett, 2 Dan Lawrence, 3 Ollie Pope (capt), 4 Joe Root, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Jamie Smith (wkt), 7 Chris Woakes, 8 Gus Atkinson, 9 Matthew Potts, 10 Olly Stone, 11 Shoaib Bashir.
Sri Lanka 1 Dimuth Karunaratne, 2 Nishan Madushka (wkt), 3 Pathum Nissanka, 4 Angelo Mathews, 5 Dinesh Chandimal, 6 Dhananjaya de Silva (capt), 7 Kamindu Mendis, 8 Milan Rathnayake, 9 Prabath Jayasuriya, 10 Asitha Fernando, 11 Lahiru Kumara
Toss: Sri Lanka win and bowl first
Dhananjaya de Silva calls right and chooses to bat first puts England in. Perhaps he can see clouds overhead that nobody else has spotted.
Preamble
Morning everyone and welcome to the Lord’s Test. That seems an odd thing to be saying at the end of August, and on closer inspection this match turns out to be the second-latest Test ever staged at Lord’s (after England v West Indies 2017, which began on 7 September). The more senior members of MCC will be in grave danger of slipping on the first conker of autumn. But the weather gods have decided to pretend that it’s still high summer: not till Monday afternoon does the chance of rain in any given hour go above 10 per cent.
For Ollie Pope’s England team, there’s a series to be won after they crept to victory at Old Trafford in a style to which they are now unaccustomed. For Sri Lanka, who lost that match but won acclaim for their tenacity, there’s a jolt of pressure, which could be bracing: they simply have to win this time. For MCC, there will be swathes of empty seats if the game goes into a fourth day. That Test in 2017 didn’t make it to a third tea-break as West Indies scored 300 in both their innings combined, but a line-up with Kamindu Mendis down at No 7 can surely do better than that.
Play starts at 11am UK time and I’ll be back 25 minutes before that with news of the toss.
