For almost two sessions the gulf between Alastair Cook and the rest of the specialist batsmen was as wide as Nigel Farage’s grin, and no less disturbing to contemplate. England’s captain batted serenely on a friendly surface that shouted out to batsmen “remain” rather than “leave”, and he must have sensed another century. His one reliable ally was Jonny Bairstow, who cannot be defined as a specialist since he will be donning the gloves later in the match. Unlike Bairstow, badly dropped by Shaminda Eranga, Cook did not require any assistance from the Sri Lanka fielders until he was lbw to Nuwan Pradeep.
Cook pottered along without blinking until his proclivity for the old leg clip got the better of him. Anyone who has seen him bat once requires no further elaboration of how he went about his business. Cook always plays in the same way, which is the pattern among all prolific Test batsmen. He has his system and he jolly well sticks to it whether he is batting on a belter or a minefield.
Some of the other English batsmen are not so sure of their system and were unable to capitalise upon a golden opportunity to stabilise young Test careers. This does not really apply to Joe Root. Currently his stock is high so that when he fails it is put down to an aberration (he has, however, failed two times out of three this summer). But the others are feeling their way with varying degrees of desperation.
It all started in such a textbook manner. The first hour, the sages had pronounced (as usual), would be critical. That is the best time to bowl at Lord’s; just a hint of green in the pitch, a hard ball and a bit of early-morning haze. Well, England breezed through those vital 60 minutes: 51 for no wicket from 14 overs. At drinks there was time for the two teams to have a think.
The Sri Lankans took a pragmatic view, acknowledging that not much was happening out there; the pitch was flat, there was little swing, and there was the prospect of toil ahead. In which case the plan was to bottle up the batsmen, give them nothing to hit, and hope for a mistake. Angelo Mathews opted to bowl himself alongside the wily Rangana Herath and the pursuit of maidens began.
It is unlikely that England would have been so analytical.
Tacitly both batsmen must have recognised a benign surface; there were runs out there. Such a realisation can sometimes cause a problem. The pitch can seem so trustworthy that it can induce a kind of paralysis, which stems from this kind of thought process: “The ball is doing nothing; I should never get out on here; if I avoid making any mistakes, if I shun any risk-taking I should still be here at the close. So I must sit on the bowlers.”
It may well be that some such thought flickered through Alex Hales’ mind. He played three consecutive maidens from Mathews. Hales looked suspicious of the Sri Lanka captain as if he was confronted by some modern amalgam of Alec Bedser and SF Barnes (in fact Mathews has 30 Test wickets at an average over 50).
The initiative was surrendered. An archetypal Aussie side would surely have sought to dominate from here; so would a really good English one.
Hales had played 22 consecutive dot balls before facing his last delivery. Now some batsmen – Geoff Boycott springs to mind – can happily sit on bowlers for hour after hour. But that is unlikely to fit Hales’s temperament or technique.
Having arrived at Herath’s end, Hales then went from one extreme to the other. He defended his first ball from the left-arm spinner, then he swung wildly at the second and was caught at slip, thereby revealing flaws in his system. In white-ball cricket Hales has seldom seemed especially vulnerable against spin. So far in Tests he averages 11 against spinners, 44 against pacemen. At least he must be batting in the right place.
So England lost the initiative. Cook went on in his own way looking utterly relaxed. He may be a tad more fragile than we think because since passing the 10,000 runs he has batted more smoothly. Perhaps that landmark affected him. The other batsmen went back to the pavilion with unfathomable regularity until the advent of the irrepressible Bairstow. Nick Compton, by universal consent, has one more chance to keep his Test career alive. He was late moving into a cover drive on another day when England were grateful to possess some good batsmen beyond their middle order.
