England vs Sri Lanka LIVE cricket score: DAY TWO of second Test
A weighty innings from Moeen Ali feels like another piece in England’s jigsaw – and it has left Sri Lanka with a conundrum of their own. How, faced with a total of 400-plus, are they going to avoid heading for Lord’s 2-0 down?
Ali’s regression from a batsman of genuine class to a confused spin-bowler-cum-No 8 has been one of the few minuses in the Trevor Bayliss era.
But the injury to Ben Stokes, who briefly hobbled into the Chester-le-Street press box this morning on his crutches, has granted him temporary breathing space at No 7.
On this evidence – and a change apparently being as good as a rest – it was just what he needed. At lunch, he has 85 and England are in control at 408 for eight. Sri Lanka will need to dig deep from here.
Ali was helped by Chris Woakes, whose selection for this game ahead of Jake Ball looked sounder for every run he added with Ali. By the time he edged a drive off Suranga Lakmal to depart for 39, the pair had added 92 for the seventh wicket, nipping in the bud any optimism Sri Lanka may have allowed themselves when they removed Jonny Bairstow last evening.
Woakes’s steadfastness allowed Ali to feel his way back into the rhythm of a proper Test innings, and there was something of the old flair about the manner in which he reached his half-century, skipping down the track to deposit Rangana Herath’s left-arm spin over mid-off.
It has been noted before that, whatever else an Ali innings is, it is never offensive to the eye, and there were enough drives and pulls here to confirm the theory. Having scored one Test fifty in his previous 17 innings, he is now within touching distance of a second hundred. Chester-le-Street will greet it warmly.
There was, it must be said, a helping hand from the Sri Lankans. If their fielding on Friday touched the heights, this morning’s efforts scraped the barrel. Ali was put down at a widish second slip on 36 by Dimuth Karunaratne, and Woakes should have been caught behind on eight off Shaminda Eranga.
Unaccountably, Dinesh Chandimal failed to land a glove on a chance that would have been taken by a club wicketkeeper, and he was later replaced behind the stumps by Kusal Mendis – though this was because of a thumb injury sustained the previous evening rather than a punishment for incompetence.
Stuart Broad came and went in a hurry, caught behind off the persevering Nuwan Pradeep, but the movement on offer for Sri Lanka’s seamers will have been noted by Broad himself and Jimmy Anderson. This game could yet move forward apace this afternoon.
England vs Sri Lanka LIVE cricket score: DAY TWO of second Test
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