BRIT OVAL (Sri Lanka won toss): Sri Lanka beat England by 46 runs
WHEN the word “factor” begins to follow a name, you know that a player belongs to the highest class. Kevin Pietersen has joined the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Brian Lara, who can make any run-chase appear within reach, but until he converts starts into hundreds he will leave part of his talent unfulfilled.
The Pietersen factor meant that England retained hope of levelling the NatWest Series yesterday, even though the target of 320 would have been their highest winning total batting second. Once he tried to slog-sweep and instead hit over the slow left arm of Sanath Jayasuriya, the asking rate soared to unrealistic levels.
Andrew Strauss, the captain, underlined the importance of individual hundreds last week when he predicted that England would win the series if a batsman managed to reach three figures in each match. In a sense, he is right. Upul Tharanga scored 120 at Lord’s, Jayasuriya hit 122 yesterday and Sri Lanka are 2-0 up.
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For their part, England have scored only two hundreds in their past 20 matches, both by Marcus Trescothick and with one of them against Ireland. Pietersen is the reigning ICC one-day player of the year for good reason, but despite passing fifty five times in nine innings since the end of last season, he has not gone beyond 77.
In his defence, Pietersen could say that the job of the upper order will be easier if the bowlers ever establish a stranglehold. England book-ended the Sri Lanka innings tightly, with Stephen Harmison bowling markedly straighter and fuller than at Lord’s, but their command of the basics sagged desperately in between. The young seamers could barely contain Jayasuriya and Mahela Jayawardena during a stand of 160 in 140 balls for the second wicket and the total of wides eventually reached 21, two fewer than the tally three days earlier. Sajid Mahmood took 26 balls to concede his fifty and was drained of confidence by the end of a third spell.
He suffered most from the decision of Strauss to introduce the third Power Play after 21 overs with Jayasuriya and Jayawardena well set. Bowling too short and unable to counter premeditated aggression, he fed shots to unprotected boundaries and Strauss was forced to recall Harmison, his strike bowler, to plug the runs.
Jayasuriya has happy memories of this most batsman-friendly of grounds — he scored 213 here in the 1998 Test match. This was his 20th hundred in his 358th one-day international and the modus operandi followed a familiar pattern as his short arms flayed balls over and through the off side.
Jayawardena began ominously by flipping Mahmood over mid-wicket for six and it took a misunderstanding over a run to split the partnership. By this stage Jayasuriya was stuttering through the nineties and determined that nothing — not even the preservation of the captain — would block his route to the landmark.
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England needed a collapse, but Kumar Sangakkara maintained the momentum so that wickets came too late to cause Sri Lanka to mope through the break between innings. Then, when Trescothick carved to deep gully in the second over, England’s task became harder almost straight away.
Strauss and Ian Bell fell to aggressive shots when one of them needed to underpin the innings and Pietersen appeared handicapped in his running after being struck on a knee by Lasith Malinga. Once again his duel with Muttiah Muralitharan proved highly watchable, but it was the underrated Jayasuriya who did the damage.
Having deceived Pietersen, he beat Paul Collingwood and Jamie Dalrymple through the air as they sought to hit over the top. Both men had batted well in what would have been excellent supporting roles, but with no Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff to fire at the other end Sri Lanka moved farther and farther ahead.
The innings finished with three run outs, a fate unlikely to befall England’s opponents in the immediate future, to leave one remaining question: why did only 64 per cent of the Sky viewers who decide these things vote for Jayasuriya as the man of the match?
SCOREBOARD FROM THE BRIT OVAL
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W U Tharanga c Trescothick b Harmison 17
S T Jayasuriya c Bresnan b Harmison 122
*D P M D Jayawardena run out 66
K C Sangakkara c Pietersen b Mahmood 51
T M Dilshan b Bresnan 9
R P Arnold c Strauss b Harmison 5
M F Maharoof run out0
W P U C J Vaas c G O Jones b Mahmood 13
S L Malinga not out 2
M Muralitharan not out1
Extras (b 4, lb 7, w 21, nb 1) 33
Total (8 wkts, 50 overs) 319
P D R L Perera did not bat.
FALL OF WICKETS: 1-34, 2-194, 3-259, 4-283, 5-298, 6-298, 7-304, 8-317.
BOWLING: Harmison 10-2-31-3; Plunkett 8-0-58-0; Bresnan 6-0-38-1; Mahmood 7-0-80-2; Collingwood 5-0-30-0; Dalrymple 10-0-45-0; Pietersen 4-0-26-0.
ENGLAND
M E Trescothick c Dilshan b Malinga 9
*A J Strauss c Muralitharan b Maharoof 18
I R Bell c Muralitharan b Malinga 40
K P Pietersen b Jayasuriya 73
P D Collingwood b Jayasuriya 56
J W M Dalrymple st Sangakkara b Jayasuriya 37
G O Jones c Sangakkara b Muralitharan 8
T T Bresnan not out 11
S I Mahmood run out 4
L E Plunkett run out 3
S J Harmison run out 2
Extras (lb 5, w 5, nb 2) 12
Total (46.4 overs) 273
FALL OF WICKETS: 1-10, 2-48, 3-116, 4-176, 5-222, 6-235, 7-253, 8-258, 9-263.
BOWLING: Vaas 8-0-42-0; Malinga 8-0-45-2; Maharoof 7-0-39-1; Perera 5-0-40-0; Muralitharan 9.4-0-51-1; Jayasuriya 9-0-51-3.
Umpires: I J Gould and D B Hair.
SCHEDULE: Saturday: Third one-day international (Chester-le-Street). Wednesday June 28: Fourth one-day international (Old Trafford). Saturday July 1: Fifth one-day international (Headingley).
TICKET RUSH
TICKETS for the first four days of the opening Ashes Test match between Australia and England in Brisbane from November 23 to 27 were sold out within 90 minutes yesterday morning. The entire allocation was snapped up when sales began on the official website and through outlets for the first Test at the Gabba.
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Interest in the Ashes tour has been sky-high since England’s thrilling 2-1 victory in their home series last year.