It has been late coming, but summer finally arrived at Lord’s and it sparkled like the jewel in cricket’s crown. The ground was full and purring, empty areas only in the new Warner stand, which is under construction, in front of which sat, in splendid isolation, a small block of members, as if the Halle Choir had arrived in London a month early for their Albert Hall Proms concert.
The air was warm, with a gentle breeze from the east: in the middle of Mick Hunt’s checkerboard-mown outfield, the acres cut low enough for the ball to run rapidly across it with barely a touch of the bat, was a pristine pitch. The weather leading into the game has been kinder to the groundsman than he has been used to in the last month.
All this – the ground, the weather, the atmosphere, Hunt’s 22 yards – pointed to a day of runs, and when Alastair Cook won the toss, the crowd sat back and waited for a feast. Instead England contrived to get themselves into bother, the innings underpinned, in their contrasting fashions, only by Cook and a brilliant hundred from Jonny Bairstow so that they were able to close on 279 for six.
The England captain made 85 chanceless runs and seemed set for two or three times that many before he was lbw, a decision that was more out than Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove combined, so that Bairstow could not bring himself to endorse a chief executive’s referral. For Bairstow, batting is a simple, enjoyable business at the moment. He stands still in preparation, moves sweetly and late into the ball, and just wafts it away, in such eloquent form that his spatial awareness allows him to pick the gaps almost unerringly. It is almost laughable how easy the game can seem for one batsman while utterly challenging for another.
Bairstow, bristling and busy, will resume his innings on 107, his third Test century in seven matches following those in Cape Town and Headingley. It was reached to the acclaim of the crowd in the day’s penultimate over from 160 balls with 13 fours. As seems often to be the case with batsmen at the peak of their game, they tend to get the rub of the green, and Bairstow’s was not an innings without blemish. He had made only 11 when he clipped the fast-medium Nuwan Pradeep in the air to midwicket, where Shaminda Eranga dropped a clanger. Bairstow promptly hit the next ball properly along the ground past the same fielder.
Later, when Bairstow had 56, Eranga thought he had made amends, hitting the batsman on the back pad in front of his stumps. The umpire’s reluctance meant an inevitable review, which went in the batsman’s favour by a millimetre: the fact that the ball would have blasted leg stump from the ground merely highlighted once more the absurdity of the generous margins of error allowed the officials.
The rest of the England batting had a day they might wish to file away under “forgettable”. The start from Cook and Alex Hales was brisk enough, with 50 on the board before the first drinks break. Sri Lanka, and Angelo Mathews in particular, began to play a canny game though, drying up the runs, the tourists’ captain delivering maiden over after maiden over. Such things have never concerned Cook but Hales, scoreless for 22 deliveries, heaved at the next from Rangana Herath and was caught at slip. The total patience of Test cricket is still eluding him and he was to be seen in the Nursery nets during the tea interval taking throw-downs: the attempted slog over midwicket was notably absent.
Nick Compton’s stay was brief. Despite all the conflicting advice sent in his direction, he has always set his own tempo – adagio, say, rather than allegro – but here (thrusting care aside?) he attempted an expansive drive without getting his feet adequately positioned, and edged Suranga Lakmal to the keeper. He really is in the last-ditch Wetherspoon’s now.
No such concerns for Joe Root, although he too will rue a missed opportunity on a glorious batting day, as Lakmal hammered low into his pad. Rod Tucker turned the appeal down, goodness knows why, and was convincingly wrong to do so as the review sought by Mathews comprehensively showed. The umpiring in the series has been excellent but that is two poor decisions on the first day here.
James Vince was unable to further his case or disabuse the notion that he is essentially an attractive batsman to watch, but that the aesthetics of his fundamentally offside style has yet to be matched with substance. He had made 10 when he played inside a delivery from Pradeep that held its line up the slope and trimmed the off-bail. Had the batsman even got a pad to it, he might have survived, such is the nature of “umpire’s call”.
Cook, meanwhile, had simply been doing what he has done for the past decade, being strong off his legs and square on the offside, but punctuating his habitual areas with the occasional punchy cover drive. His half-century, reached immediately after lunch, came from 89 balls, and, after Vince’s departure, he and Bairstow, a pair of batsmen whose contrasting styles are so complementary, began to flourish, their fifth-wicket partnership taking England from 84 for four to 164.
Now, though, Cook saw easy runs as Pradeep, from the Nursery end and round the wicket, targeted his pads. Eranga had already tried this early on and paid the price with easy boundaries of a dangerous tactic to sustain, and Cook, eye well and truly in, whipped one fine almost from the line of middle and off. Next ball, though, he tried again and this time his judgment let him down.
