Rain throughout the morning and some short sharp showers later on saw the fourth day of this final Test of the series docked by 43 overs. There is still adequate time, though, for England to win the match and claim a clean sweep in the series.
England had reached 233 for seven, extending their overnight lead of 237 to 361, with Alex Hales making 94 – not without its mid-innings controversy – and Alastair Cook an uncharacteristically skittish unbeaten 49 before declaring the innings.
It left Sri Lanka 12 overs to face in which England came at them strongly with five slips in place for Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson, who, unusually, had just swapped their preferred ends, so that Broad came from the Pavilion to deliver the opening over. The Sri Lanka openers, Dimuth Karunaratne and Kaushal Silva, survived to reach 32 without loss.
England, however, can look forward to a fifth-day pitch that has shown increasing signs of uneven bounce, particularly but not exclusively when bowling from the Pavilion end, and which the tall England pacemen ought to be able to exploit.
There was some turn too for the left-armer Rangana Herath, albeit out of bowlers footmarks. Sri Lanka have managed it before on this ground but it could be a tough final day to survive.
Having come so close to his maiden Test hundred, Hales may not have appreciated it at the time, but this has been a good series for him, the only one of the three England batsmen on some sort of trial to nail his place. There is no century to his name yet but he has made it at least to the 80s in each of the three Test matches, and totalled 292 runs in the series at an average of 58.4.
If he has turned out to be less obviously dynamic in Test cricket than many had expected, then it is clear that he is learning to play to his strengths, with a capacity to punish loose deliveries while recognising the lack of time constraint offered in the longest format. He had played himself to within one good solid blow of a place on the honours board when Angelo Mathews nipped one down the slope and into his front pad. Hales’s review was inevitable but Rod Tucker’s decision was a sound one.
The applause as the batsman slowly left the field was sympathetic but the truth is that only a strange piece of earlier judgment by Tucker had allowed him to bat as long as he did. Hales had made 56 when the pace bowler Nuwan Pradeep torpedoed him with a wicked ball that kept low, jackknifing the batsman, and removing his off stump. But Tucker had called a no-ball so Hales survived. The trouble was that replays showed the bowler’s foot to be fractionally behind the crease, so that the delivery was legal.
Unfortunately there is no redress in such a circumstance and thoughts went back to Wellington in February when the umpire Richard Illingworth similarly called a no-ball on the New Zealand bowler Doug Bracewell when the Australia batsman Adam Voges had made seven, only for it to be shown as legal. Voges went on to make 239.
The point is that while there is a protocol to change a dismissal that is shown to be the result of an uncalled no-ball, there is none for the reverse, one strong reason why umpires are so reluctant to make tight line calls (hence the oddity of Tucker’s call now). It is a simple anomaly to rectify (just check all wickets or potential wickets) and the International Cricket Council is believed to be in the process of so doing. Beyond that, though, it was still a composed innings from Hales, over more than four and a half hours, with 10 fours and a six planted over long-on off Herath.
He was able to add 82 with Cook, although curiously for the sixth rather than first wicket. Cook (who with a batting average of 46 and a bowling average of seven Cook sounds like a dream all-rounder at No7) had been unable to open the previous evening because of a bruised knee sustained in the field but had come in with the dismissal of the nightwatchman Steven Finn.
Having survived a very close lbw decision when on six, the ball from Herath turning back sharply out of the rough as he shaped to cut, Cook played a nicely judged hand, in which time we had seen him try a reverse ramp, an orthodox ramp, and witnessed one clumping front-foot pickup blow for six over midwicket off Eranga.
By the end, he had descended almost into the realms of indecent frivolity, like a maiden aunt hitching up her skirt and dancing the can-can. He will get over it.
