Gus Atkinson produced his fifth performance worthy of the Lord’s honours boards in his debut summer as an England Test cricketer, adding a second-innings five-for to his maiden hundred as Sri Lanka’s resistance in the second Test was finally broken. Gus Atkinson‘s exploits also put him in select company as an allrounder, becoming only the third England Men’s player to score a hundred and take a five-wicket haul in the same Test.
Gus Atkinson picked up a fifer to get to the Lord’s honours board for the fourth time in two Tests – three five-fers and a century. Gus Atkinson, who scored a century in the first innings, starred in the second with a five-wicket haul that helped bowl out Sri Lanka for 292. The victory came soon after Tea, with the new ball leading to three quick wickets.
Pitch and Toss
The pitch at Lord’s is expected to be seamer-friendly. As there is a good amount of bounce and seam with the new ball. The curator generally offers a green top in tests, which increases the interest of the pacers from both sides. The Lord’s Cricket Ground in London will be expected to provide considerable assistance to fast bowlers. Batters will have to see off the new-ball threat in a bid to entertain chances of playing a long innings. The captain winning the toss will likely opt to bat first, considering the overall track record of the venue.
Sri Lanka skipper Dhananjaya De Silva won the toss and chose to field first with Pathum Nissanka coming in for Kusal Mendis. English skipper Ollie Pope batting first made one change replacing Mark Wood with Olly Stone.
Day 1 : Joe Root, Gus Atkinson put England in the box seat on Day 1
Joe Root’s historic 33rd Test ton, the joint-most by an England batter equalling Sir Alastair Cook, and a career-best unbeaten fifty from Gus Atkinson helped England steal the thunder on the opening day of the second Test against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. The visitors were on top for a major part of the day and even started the final session with an early breakthrough of Chris Woakes but Root and Atkinson then produced a counterattack that left the Lankans stunned.
As the ball got softer, batting did get easier with the surface being on the slower side. However, Sri Lanka didn’t help their cause by bowling without a solid plan after Woakes’ dismissal. Their only ploy was to stick to hitting the top of off and Gus Atkinson responded with aggression, unfurling some punchy drives and also lofting the spinners for sixes. It was just the support Root was craving for as the premier batter continued his effortless stay at the crease to pile up yet another hundred at Lord’s.
It took Root’s trademark reverse ramp shot, a stroke that he had barely used in recent Tests, to bring about his downfall due to the lack of pace off the surface. Sri Lanka’s hopes of then cleaning up the tail were dashed as Atkinson continued to hold firm against the second new ball with Matthew Potts also showing strong support. The pacers also seemed to have gone flat after an excellent 60-odd overs earlier in the day when they used the conditions to optimal effect.
Stand-in skipper Ollie Pope and Daniel Lawrence failed to get going but Ben Duckett, Harry Brook and Jamie Smith were all guilty of throwing away starts on a surface where batting was more about just concentration than a lot of demons in the surface. Root was flawless while Gus Atkinson rode his luck with a calculated assault to put the home side in front.
The visitors would have hoped to restrict England to a below-par total at Woakes’ dismissal but for the second game running, they weren’t able to close out the lower order. Lahiru Kumara in his comeback game impressed, as did Asitha Fernando and Milan Rathnayake but the trio lost their bite in the final session.
Day 2 : Gus Atkinson, bowlers put England in commanding position on Day 2
For the second game running, Kamindu Mendis (74) came to Sri Lanka’s rescue but his dogged resistance wasn’t enough to help the visitors concede a big first-innings lead. England captain Ollie Pope decided against enforcing the follow on and that England will bat again in pursuit of consolidating their first innings lead of 231. The hosts lost Daniel Lawrence in the tricky period to stumps to the relentless Lahiru Kumara but England still ended the day in a commanding position. They lead by 256 with nine wickets left and three full days left to play.
Earlier on, England’s bowlers not only outbowled their Sri Lankan counterparts but also set up a masterclass on how bowl on the Lord’s surface that had a bit in it for the seamers throughout. If anything, the pitch got quicker on the second day and it played perfectly into England’s hands with the pace of Olly Stone and Gus Atkinson.
However, it was the nagging accuracy of Matthew Potts (2-19) and Chris Woakes (2-21) that did bulk of the damage. Atkinson and Stones also picked up two wickets apiece but were relatively expensive. Amidst all of England’s domination, Mendis looked assured at the crease and batted with aplomb.
At 118/7, Sri Lanka were in threat of being bowled out rather quickly and had that been the case, Pope may have thought of enforcing the follow-on. Instead, Mendis fought on through a 35-run stand with Prabhat Jayasuriya (8) and a 32-run partnership with Lahiru Kumara (0). Understandably, the tailender duo played second fiddle with Mendis doing the heavy lifting with the bat.
A rush of blood saw Jayasuriya throwing his wicket against Shoaib Bashir while Kumara was run out after a terrible mix up with Mendis. Both dismissals came against the run of play before Mendis became the last man out to Atkinson.
With the weather in London set to be fair, Sri Lanka will face a gargantuan task to avoid defeat in this game. As Lawrence’s dismissal showed, the pitch still has enough life and it is expected to show increasing levels of variable bounce in the last two days.
Day 3 : Joe Root headlines England’s dominant day
England strengthened their hold on the Lord’s Test with an almost flawless third day, setting Sri Lanka a daunting target of 483 runs and denting their run-chase with two wickets. While the hosts were at it, Joe Root scored his 34th Test hundred to go past Alastair Cook and become England’s leading century-maker. With what was his fastest Test hundred (111 balls), Root climbed to joint-sixth on the all-time list of centurions in Test cricket; he now sits at par with the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Lara, Younis Khan and Mahela Jayawardene.
Root notched up the landmark Test ton towards the end of the middle session with a stylish punch through covers. The afternoon saw Sri Lanka pick six wickets for 92 runs but Root found a way to forge crucial little stands to take England’s lead closer to 500. The hosts were eventually bowled out for 251 inside 55 overs when Root, after having snuck runs from under Sri Lanka’s nose, was caught off a short ball in the deep.
Leading up to that dismissal, Sri Lanka had struck regularly in the middle session. Prabhat Jayasuriya got going for the visitors with the scalp of Jamie Smith in the second over after Lunch, getting one to straighten just enough to pin the batter in front. The left-arm spinner though had little answers against Root, the batter hitting him for as many as three boundaries in an over at one point of time.
Earlier on the third day, England added 134 runs to their overnight total in the morning session despite losing three wickets. Ben Duckett, unbeaten overnight on 15, could add only nine runs to his total before he was caught behind off Rathnayake, thanks to a relay catch that rebounded off gully’s hands and settled into Angelo Mathews’ hands at slip. It was a phase of play where both Rathnayake and Lahiru Kumara beat the bat in favorable overhead conditions during their four-over opening bursts.
For Ollie Pope though, it was the short ball that proved difficult to negotiate. And it took Asitha Fernando just one delivery to dismiss the England stand-in captain. With the legside packed for the pull shot, Pope made room and cut the ball uppishly into the off-side, only to find the fielder stationed at deep point.
It didn’t help Sri Lanka’s cause that Harry Brook was dropped on 16 by Nishan Madushka, and to add insult to injury, the bowler Prabhat Jayasuriya was hit for a six on the very next ball. Brook and Joe Root added 58 runs for the fourth wicket before Brook was caught off Jayasuriya’s bowling in the deep, safely by Madushka this time.
Towards the end of the day which was cut short due to bad light, Sri Lanka lost Nishan Madushka early, with Gus Atkinson eliciting an edge from the batter outside off-stump. Pathum Nissanka got a good ball from Olly Stone and nicked to Root again in the slips. Dimuth Karunaratne looked relatively steady during his 23 not out and will be key going into Sunday if Sri Lanka are to save the series with more than two days to go.
Day 4 : Gus Atkinson helps England take 2-0 lead
Gus Atkinson, who scored a century in the first innings, starred in the second with a five-wicket haul that helped bowl out Sri Lanka for 292. The victory came soon after Tea, with the new ball leading to three quick wickets. Dhananjaya de Silva, who made his 16th Test fifty, inside-edged an Atkinson delivery onto his stumps and Milan Rathnayake edged behind soon after. Chris Woakes wrapped up the innings and the win with an off-pace delivery to Lahiru Kumara on what was a slow pitch on offer.
Most of the damage was done by England in the afternoon but the second session started with a flurry of boundaries from Dinesh Chandimal, the batter finding the middle of the bat against Shoaib Bashir’s offspin but not quite able to do the same against Chris Woakes. The pacer bowled a probing six-over spell but with no wickets to show for. Chandimal, meanwhile, went on to make a half-century off 42 balls, the quickest by a Sri Lankan at Lord’s.
In the process, Chandimal added a half-century stand for the fifth wicket but England broke through soon after the milestone with the wicket of Angelo Mathews. It was a nice set-up by Shoaib Bashir, who went round the wicket and got the batter chipping to mid-off. Chandimal was finally undone in a fresh spell from Gus Atkinson when he inside-edged onto his pad and lobbed a catch to short leg. The pacer struck again in his next over and sent back the in-form Kamindu Mendis caught-behind.
Skipper, Dhananjaya de Silva and Milan Rathnayake came together and added 73 runs for the eighth wicket. De Silva in particular looked impressive during his 70-ball stay and brought up his 16th Test fifty with a drive down the ground. He was castled as a delivery by Atkinson kept low, soon after which the batter chopped on.
Earlier in the morning session, England reduced Sri Lanka to 136 for 4 despite a resilient half-century from Dimuth Karunaratne, whose dismissal just before the break set Sri Lanka back. Karunaratne and Angelo Mathews had earlier steadied the chase with a 50-run stand after Prabhat Jayasuriya fell early. England’s bowlers, led by Olly Stone, capitalized on key moments to keep Sri Lanka under pressure.
England secured a hard-fought victory by 190 runs on the fourth afternoon at Lord’s and took an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series against Sri Lanka. It was their fifth win on the trot this summer and second under the stand-in captain Ollie Pope.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Dhananjaya De Silva the loosing skipper said : We had two days to bat. The message was to bat simple and bat long. They always put pressure on us with their batting, we controlled a bit but that’s not good enough to win a Test match in England. I could have batted first but our top-order was struggling, we wanted to see what the pitch is gonna do and bat next, that didn’t work at all.
(On Kamindu Mendis) He’s been awesome in every innings except the last innings here. He’s getting runs very quickly batting at seven. We have to do better to get a win in England against this quality side. We have to do better in all three departments.
Ollie Pope the winning skipper said : Really happy to be 2-0 up in the series. Some very special individual performances this week and very good contributions throughout the whole side, really happy to win the series, onto the Oval. (Captaincy) This week was very different to last in terms of the modes of dismissals. At Lord’s we are always in the game with the slope. It’s just about getting creative and find different catching positions.
The way Root played, we were lucky enough to have a big lead and so you can get a bit funky with the field. (Reviews) Not quite going my way at the minute. I’d rather use them than have three. Gus was the standout. Even the way Potts played and Olly Stone came an played as well, massive contributions for the team. They can win you Test matches. Getting those extra 100-120 runs can really put you in a very good position. Everyone takes their batting very seriously.
The pitch was gradually getting worse, it was important to let the bowlers have a bit of time off their feet. We gave spin a crack, we could have tried a few more things but we knew how important the new ball was on this pitch. That was the reason behind that (for not persisting with the spinners yesterday). Always a special Test, have a few got few Surrey boys up in the changing room, should be a great week.
England seal the series with a game remaining. Gus Atkinson leads his team off the field and takes a stump as a souvenir. Time for handshakes. Ben Stokes has a bright smile on his face. A convincing win for England. Centuries from Root and Atkinson set up this win as they scored an above-par total. The England seamers outbowled their counterparts to take a healthy first innings lead. And, Root’s record 34th Test ton helped them set a daunting target for the visitors.
Three SL batters notched up fifties today and Rathnayake scored an impressive 43 but the England bowlers were relentless even though there was little help off the deck. Gus Atkinson picked up a fifer to get to the Lord’s honours board for the fourth time in two Tests – three five-fors and a century.
Even after reducing England to 216/6 on the opening day after DDS’s decision to bowl, they failed to capitalize. And England didn’t give them a sniff after that. Joe Root’s twin centuries to overtake Alastair Cook and Gus Atkinson’s all-round performance were the biggest highlights of this Test but it was a good team show from the hosts. England will be eyeing a summer clean sweep as the series shifts to the Kennington Oval for the final Test which commences on Friday.