Sri Lanka enjoyed one of their best days of the series. On what is now generally accepted as a typical Lord’s pitch, offering little help to the bowlers beyond a smidgen of low bounce occasionally, they worked very hard to dismiss England for 416, with Jonny Bairstow remaining unbeaten on 167 and Chris Woakes making 66. Their reply was forthright and confident, with Dimuth Karunaratne and Kaushal Silva adding 108 for the first wicket before Steven Finn, a little fortuitously, dismissed the former for 50, caught down the legside by a tumbling Bairstow as he tried to turn the ball to fine leg.
If it was a relief for anyone in the England side, then it was for the keeper. Karunaratne had made 28 of Sri Lanka’s 51 when Alastair Cook brought Woakes into the attack from the Nursery End, three overs before the tea interval. Woakes’s first delivery was on the mark, moving across the left-hander and finding a probing edge, which flew to Bairstow who barely managed to get a glove on it before it hit him on the left thigh and bounced away.
Wicketkeeping at Lord’s can be a tricky business. The great Middlesex and England keeper John Murray, who took more catches on this ground than anyone, once explained how the slope can unbalance a keeper, throwing him down the slope one way, and making it harder to make ground up it. Certainly it is difficult to recover if wrongfooted by, say, an inside edge.
There is a phenomenon too, found on some grounds, of which Lord’s seems to be one, where the ball, if landing upright on the seam, can, as it loses pace, dip and shape in the air. Finally, in a desperate attempt at mitigation here, it has to be said that Woakes is a deceptively slippery bowler, the fastest that England are fielding, whose opening delivery was anything but a loosener: it appeared to be on Bairstow before he was expecting it.
All this is being kind, though: the keeper did not need to move, nor did the ball misbehave. Bairstow has dropped a few chances in his time, but none more straightforward than this.
By the close Sri Lanka had reached 162 for one, 254 adrift , with Silva and Kusal Mendis, pocket rockets both, on 79 and 25 respectively. On this surface it was always going to be very long odds that there would be a third successive enforcement of the follow-on by England, even if the opportunity were to arise. As it stands, unless there is a catastrophic Sri Lankan collapse on the third morning, it will not be an issue.
The England bowling was emasculated by the conditions to an extent, just as had been that of Sri Lanka. There was little evidence of swing, even with the new ball, and if there was any reverse swing to be had later on it was a hint only for the Lord’s outfield is far too lush to rough up the ball and there is only so much cross-seam bowling that can be done. Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad hammered away and will understand the law of diminishing returns, and while Finn plugged away, and certainly livened up after his wicket, he is still down on his most potent pace. Woakes was the pick of the seamers, and Moeen Ali, from the Nursery End, found some nice drift in the air, and just once, perhaps from some bowlers’ rough, spun one sharply to beat Karunaratne’s outside edge.
Against this, both openers looked well organised and batted with real purpose, their running between the wickets matching that of England for its urgency and fine judgment. Karunaratne was perilously close to being lbw to Woakes when 31, immediately after tea, surviving only on the umpire’s not-out decision and the technology showing umpire’s call on height. If nothing else, as James Vince might note, it shows the virtue of getting a pad in the way as a second line of defence.
It appeared to render Karunaratne becalmed for he then went through a period of facing 30 balls without scoring, before suddenly jolting awake and hitting what must have been a bemused Anderson over mid-off, through a vacant slip area, and then handsomely through midwicket for three successive boundaries.
The early part of the day was dominated by Bairstow and Woakes, untroubled by anything Sri Lanka could propel. Woakes reached his half-century from 102 balls, simultaneously posting the century stand, and might well have been thinking of a Lord’s hundred and the honours board when he chipped a return catch to Rangana Herath, the third of four wickets for the spinner, a disappointing end to an excellent innings that, alongside his bowling, has fully justified his selection in the absence of Ben Stokes.
Bairstow, meanwhile, was to play out a curious hand. He had reached his century from 160 balls shortly before stumps on the first day, and now went past 150 from a further 61 deliveries, by which time he had lost Woakes. With the lower order for company, he might have been expected to be more expansive, but instead, with the field set back, he took a further 30 balls over his last 14 runs.
It was still a noteworthy innings however, the highest by an England keeper at Lord’s and behind, by a single run, only Clyde Walcott’s 168 during the famous 1950 Ramadhin and Valentine West Indies win on the same ground. Only Alec Stewart, who made 173 against New Zealand in Auckland in 1997 has made more as an England keeper.
