ENG vs SL: England who are hosting the Lankans for a three-match test series, have already claimed the series with a 2-0 win. Though the Lankan’ could resist the English brutal attack to some extent at the Old Trafford stadium, their sublime pace and bounce is what caught them in a bad position at Lord’s as the Lankan batters collapsed in both innings.
The first match at Manchester saw a set of many records being made while the next at Lord’s saw many old records broken. The First test saw Jamie Smith the English young wicket-keeper batsman go on to score his maiden test hundred.
After them, Mathews and Chandimal supported with wonderful 50s in the second innings alongside Kamindu Mendis who then averaged over 100+, and scored his first hundred on English soil.
In the first innings already, Milan Rathnayake broke a long-standing 41-year record of Indian pacer Balwinder Singh Sandhu since he scored a 71 as a no.9 on debut, while Rathnayake surpassed it with 72 of his.
The second test was not a very pleasant outing for most of the English batters as well, however, the English maestro Joe Root went on to score two hundreds in both innings of the Lord’s test. His first innings hundred was supported well by Gus Atkinson’s first-ever First-Class hundred.
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Root amidst his innings’, went on to be England’s highest hundred-getter in test and all-formats, while next, he is only a few runs behind breaking the career records of legends like Sangakara and Alastair Cook.
The Lankans have made an announcement of their Starting XI for the 3rd and final test. The biggest change that is eminently being made is that Kusal Mendis has been brought in as a replacement for Nishan Madushka while they have also replaced the spinner Prabhat Jayasuriya with Vishwa Fernando being brought back into the side.
The change will be for good, as the place has often been a pacers’ hut, with most of the pacers producing wickets. Sri Lanka will look to restore some respect by avoiding a clean sweep at Oval.