ENG vs SL: The third test is being held at the Kia Oval, after England secured a win in the series early with their 2-0 lead. The first test which was won at Old Trafford also had similar challenges for the stand-in skipper Ollie Pope, while the next was a one-sided victory for the English side at Lord’s.
The conditions at Manchester forced England skipper Pope to withdraw parts of the game and avoid bowling the overs, though his decision was highly criticised by former white-ball captain Eoin Morgan.
England also struggled early in the first innings after their immensely good start. Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope gave England the best start they could before Duckett fell on 86 off just 79 balls. Then the skipper stood firm on his ground when every batter of the team even failed to score 20 runs.
Pope on the other hand who was criticised for his form, went on to make a record of scoring his first seven test hundreds against seven different opponent nations. Pope scored 154, striking at 98.72.
On the second day of the match at the Oval, the Lankans again struggled early on as Karunaratne fell early from Olly Stone’s direct hit. However, it was then that in the middle of the 7th over, the clouds took over the Oval and Chris Gaffney and Joel Wilson declared it was too dark for quick bowling.
Woakes hence to complete his over shortened his run up and humorously bowled off-spin it seemed. The third ball of the over to Kusal Mendis was looped up as he pulled it to mid-wicket for a single, and the second ball was pitched on the 6th stump to which Root and the skipper Stokes sitting on the balcony reacted with raised eyebrows.
His last ball of the over was down the leg side as it was pulled by Pathum Nissanka for a boundary. Nissanka was the only half-century getter while Lankans again seemed to be troubled, with Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis for the 6th wicket added 118 runs as Pope decided to bowl 17 overs of spin under the gloomy cloud cover.
Root, Dan Lawrence and Sohaib Bashir bowled continuous spin which helped the Lankan batters find solace as they handled spin better than England’s quicks like Gus Atkinson and Chris Woakes. At end of Day 2, Sri Lanka are 211/5.
