Stiffer challenges await but Joe Root's England are making a habit of winning
Joe Root’s 24th Test win as captain was fairly comfortable in the end and he has not enjoyed many finer matches than this one.
Root was man of the match for his majestic 228 and the seven-wicket victory put him level with the two Sirs, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, on the list of England wins as captain. Only Michael Vaughan stands ahead of him with 26; another record that Root should break in the not too distant future.
This was England’s fourth consecutive win away from home, the first time that has happened since the mid-1950s, and Root is unbeaten in nine Tests, going back to the defeat at Centurion on Boxing Day 2019 when the side was ravaged by illness (Ben Stokes was in charge when they lost to West Indies in July).
This is an average Sri Lanka team and much harder challenges loom but England had so little preparation for this game, transitioning in a few days from a tent in Loughborough to hot and sticky Galle and a spinning, spitting pitch. They were greatly understrength too, with this the first time Root has won away from home without Stokes by his side.
Root’s captaincy can be split into two halves. While Trevor Bayliss was coach, the one-day team was the focus and Root, as a young captain, did not have the authority to put his stamp on the Test side. Leading an exhausted team in an Ashes series days after winning the 2019 World Cup was always a very difficult challenge, and while Bayliss was a popular coach who got on well with Root, he instinctively trusted batsmen that had been successful in his white-ball teams, which was reflected in their batting.
Under Bayliss England lost 10 wickets in a session four times, having not done so at all between 1938 and 2016, and only scored first-innings totals above 400 twice in his last 24 Tests in charge.
Chris Silverwood’s promotion to head coach and the change of policy to prioritise Test cricket has galvanised Root’s captaincy. They have picked young batsmen specifically for Test cricket and not on white-ball performances and produced 400-plus totals six times in 13 matches. It is a period in which they have not played either Australia or India, but at least schooled players in a patient method that should be second nature by the time those challenges begin. “We are on an upward curve,” said Root.
With the winning habit ingrained, it is easier to introduce new players or recall old ones needing to prove a point. Dan Lawrence made 94 runs on debut and seamlessly made the leap from county cricket to the Test game. He looked completely unfazed in his first match playing in conditions he would never have faced before. “I feel like Dan Lawrence has already played 50 Tests which is great testament for a 23-year-old,” said Stuart Broad.
Jonny Bairstow had a good match in his first Test for more than a year, keeping calm in tricky circumstances in both innings to lay a claim to a permanent place, while 14 wickets for the two spinners when not bowling particularly well gives them a solid foundation for the winter.
The series resumes on Friday in Galle, again on a pitch that has been baked under the sun during this Test and is likely to turn early and disintegrate quickly. There has not been a drawn Test in Sri Lanka since 2014 and that run is unlikely to end. At 1-0 up in the series it will be tempting for England to pack their batting, particularly after the first-innings collapse.
Moeen Ali will require careful handling after 13 days in quarantine with Covid, and the bold move would be to go outside the main squad and pick one of the reserve spinners to give Root another option. More likely, they will recall Chris Woakes for Mark Wood, and James Anderson for Broad.
Requiring only 36 runs to win, it took England just over half an hour to wrap up victory. Sri Lanka were unable to replicate the pressure of the previous evening, as is so often the case, but to still be in with hopes of victory, however faint, was remarkable given their abject first innings.
They vainly reviewed an lbw to Lawrence in the first over out of hope more than anything else but soon regretted failing to look again at another leg-before shout when Dilruwan Perera, bowling around the wicket, beat Lawrence’s shot across the line. The camera homed in on Dinesh Chandimal, the stand-in skipper, moments after he saw the replay on the big screen. A shake of the head, and that was Sri Lanka’s best chance gone.
The 50 stand took 98 balls with Lawrence and Bairstow running well and picking their shots wisely on a crumbly fifth-day wicket, playing mostly off the back foot. Another 75 runs by Sri Lanka and it would have been a different game. Bairstow shouted “get in” as he swept the winning boundary, and Root hailed a “brilliant effort from everyone”. It was England’s fourth consecutive win in Sri Lanka and second in a row a Galle. One down, 16 to go. This is a long year, but one that has started encouragingly for England.
