Sri Lanka’s nail-biting draw with England owed much to benign pitch

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/jun/16/sri-lanka-england-draw-lords-pitch

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Despite the spicy end to the one-day series, when Alastair Cook could barely bring himself to talk to his opposing captain, Angelo Mathews, England have reverted to being a little more hospitable to Kumar Sangakkara and Sri Lanka, who are mighty relieved to head to Leeds level.

In Sri Lanka’s first innings Sangakkara corrected one omission on his CV by stroking an effortless century, his first at Lord’s; in the second, for good measure, he batted a further three and a half hours for 61, another fine knock, although to save the Sri Lankans’ nerves at the end of an enthralling day they would have preferred another hour of him at the crease.

So would some of the crowd. They have always adored Sangakkara at Lord’s since he delivered the Cowdrey lecture in 2011, arguably the best in the series of talks organised by MCC. He elevated that occasion just as he elevated this one. Once the match ended in a draw despite Jimmy Anderson’s superb bowling on the final day, it is most likely to be remembered for Sangakkara’s classy farewell to St John’s Wood.

The ordeal by fire that was anticipated for Sangakkara and his fellow batsmen never quite materialised. The expectation was that England would want and receive a surface that suited their strengths. After all, if this was possible in the Ashes summer of 2013, when the yearning was for slow, dry pitches on which Graeme Swann and the reverse swingers could dictate against the Australians, then surely it would be feasible to deliver what was required against the Sri Lankans in 2014.

This summer – for the same will apply against India later in the season – England surely want something to help their fast bowlers. They may not possess the most potent pace attack in the world but, with the spinning cupboard as bare as it was for the Australians in the immediate aftermath of Shane Warne’s retirement, England must be eager for quick pitches to give their four-pronged attack encouragement.

As for the Sri Lankans, what must they have craved? More or less what they got. There was an unusual sprinkling of green grass on the first morning at Lord’s but as Ian Botham, having just returned from a gruelling Test match, occasionally used to say when inviting me to have a bowl for Somerset within 40 minutes of the start of play, “This pitch is not as green as it looks.”

Beyond that veneer of verdancy at Lord’s was a dry, sluggish track which Sangakkara would come to appreciate over the next five days. This is not to diminish Sangakkara’s efforts in both innings. Without him Sri Lanka would have lost and in this match he was a far more reassuring sight at the crease than his old mate, Mahela Jayawardene.

Sangakkara does not share many qualities with the other great cricketing Kumar, Ranjitsinhji, the Prince who was another great favourite at Lord’s. The impression of Ranjitsinhji is of a batsman who dazzled with the wristy unorthodoxy of the orient, whose leg glances left spectators dumbstruck at their audacity. By contrast Sangakkara has been a pillar of pragmatic orthodoxy for the last decade and a half.

But they share one virtue. Ranjitsinjhi, even though he played in an age that celebrated the effortless amateur, actually practised furiously when a student at Cambridge University, forever honing his technique in the nets until dusk intervened, not something he necessarily wanted to be advertised. Likewise no modern cricketer practises as diligently as Sangakkara. Conscientious preparation is seldom glamorous. In Sangakkara’s case this meant enlisting at Chester-le-Street to play for Durham in May in order to enhance his acclimatisation in a country where he has seldom excelled at Test level.

There has always been the perception that Sangakkara will bow out alongside Jayawardene. Yet, if form is the barometer, this is not so likely. Sangakkara, a year younger at 36, looked far more comfortable than his constant colleague. Jayawardene was much more hesitant against England’s pacemen.

Indeed Sangakkara has seldom batted better than this and there seems no reason why he should not keep going for a good while yet. In his last five Test innings he has scored 707 runs. Only Don Bradman (three times), Wally Hammond (twice), Zaheer Abbas, Garry Sobers, Everton Weekes and Graham Gooch have been more prolific in that number of innings. Sangakkara belongs in that company.

In this match Jayawardene was replaced as Sangakkara’s staunchest ally by the captain, Mathews. Here is a batsman enhanced by the captaincy, as is often the case in the early phases of leadership – this certainly applied to Alastair Cook. In his nine matches in charge of Sri Lanka, Mathews has averaged 85 with the bat. In the first innings there were reminders of his powerful ball-striking during his century. In the second he was not bothered with runs but time. He batted long enough – just – and heads off for Headingley with the series level in the hope of another hospitable featherbed.