In the first innings when the wicket was sleeping and the Sri Lanka batsmen were cruising it was Ben Stokes’s brilliance in the field that reignited England.
On another steamy day in the field it was the turn of a contrasting character – Keaton Jennings – to change the direction of the game. This will bring a warm glow to Trevor Bayliss, who has always emphasised how a moment or two of brilliance in the field can change the course of a match.
Jennings is not a natural in the field – unlike Stokes – but he practises just as hard and in Pallekele maybe there was some reward for all that toil. He has taken over the critical short-leg position – Rory Burns started there in this series but received a nasty blow on the helmet in Galle – and after his part in two catches he may be staying there for some time. Usually, gnarled old pros connive not to be at boot hill but somehow it is not surprising that Jennings relishes the role.
“On surfaces like this when you feel you’re involved in the game it’s really awesome,” he said. “Yes you feel like you’re going to get hit at times but it’s like being in the slips on a green seamer in England. You feel like you’re in the game and that you can make an impact.
“Six hours squatting down every ball is hard work. Guys are sweeping; you are going to get bad balls and you’re in the firing line. It’s close and the ball is hard. You’ve got to accept that.”
His two contributions will compensate for all that. The dismissal of Dhananjaya de Silva was a reflex action. As Jennings self-effacingly pointed out, the ball either sticks in the hand or falls to the ground in those cases.
His second intervention was more remarkable still. “You get a feeling of what the batter is looking to do,” he said. “You try to watch his movements and match your movements to where he is trying to hit the ball. Generally you try to get in the way. I saw him [Karunaratne] go down to paddle and just set off running. He got a little too much bat on it and it ended up at me.
“I’d love to say I parried it to ‘Foakesy’ [Ben Foakes] but I genuinely tried to catch it. It hit me really hard and went straight to Foakesy.”
Many cricketers would gently rewrite history after such a catch modestly claiming that the parry was all part of the grand plan. But that is not Jennings’s way.
