The cricketing gods did not come to England’s aid yesterday, despite Alastair Cook’s hope that they might have “looked on in a bit of disgust” as Sri Lanka turned the closing overs of a comfortable win into something resembling a Test-match scrap.
Angelo Mathews, not noted for his reluctance to hit the ball, blocked or left 20 of the 21 balls he faced to allow Dinesh Chandimal to reach his century, but the 21-year-old batsman could not find the boundary and the game had reached the 48th over when a new bat was sent out — perhaps with the message “get on with it” written on it — and he reached his landmark with a six.
Cook had made his own patient century, at the same strike-rate as Chandimal of 83, but in different circumstances. He was like the boy on the burning deck, staying at his crease whence all but he had fled. Craig Kieswetter and Jonathan Trott made five runs in 26 balls between them and only Kevin Pietersen, who made a stylish 41, gave the captain much support.
Pietersen looked more relaxed than he has in some time. Between balls, he stood nonchalantly with one leg crossed over the other, leaning on his bat like a Hollywood actor of the 1950s might lean on his umbrella. He struck three consecutive fours off Suranga Lakmal in the twelfth over and two more in the bowler’s next over, but just as he looked set for a big score, he swept at a ball from Jeevan Mendis, the leg spinner, got a top edge and was caught on the leg-side boundary.
Eoin Morgan came and went before Ian Bell added 72 rather slow runs with Cook. They went 12 overs without a boundary and, although it was a positive decision to take the batting powerplay from the 35th over, England struck only 24 runs in it and lost Bell for a boundary-free 30.
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Still Cook remained, like an Essex nightclub bouncer: ugly to look at but almost impossible to get past. He was dropped twice, by Mahela Jayawardena at slip when on 15 and by Thilina Kandamby at deep point after he reached his hundred, but stayed there until seven balls from the end.
A small but noisy group shouted for “justice for the victims of the Tamil genocide” outside the ground and one protester made it on to the field, waving a Tamil flag, but that did not disturb the captain. It took a run-out in the penultimate over to dislodge him for 119 as he tried to run a risky bye.
Cook admitted that the total of 246 was about 40 runs light. “We kept losing wickets at the wrong time and were always playing rebuilding cricket,” he said. Sri Lanka, despite losing Tillekeratne Dilshan at the end of the fourth over, chased down the target easily, despite the farce at the finale, to take a 2-1 lead in the NatWest Series.
Jayawardena added 79 runs to the 144 he made in the victory at Headingley Carnegie on Friday and it was almost a surprise that he was dismissed. It took a wide ball from Jade Dernbach to get him to hit to point for 79 off 77 balls.
With Sri Lanka needing only 114 in almost 27 overs, Kumar Sangakkara batted very slowly, scoring 25 off 47 balls before he drove uppishly at a ball from Graeme Swann and was caught by Morgan at short extra cover. Swann also had Kandamby leg-before for 11 but England lacked runs in hand.
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Stuart Broad was wicketless for the fourth limited-overs international in a row to go with a lean spell in the Test series. It capped a miserable day for the fast bowler, who learnt yesterday that he had been fined 50 per cent of his match fee for the second one-day international after making “unacceptable and offensive” remarks at Billy Bowden, the umpire.