Graphic:
record chase gathers pace
Four years ago England batted 140 overs to save the first Test here and, quite
against their aspirations at the start of the fourth day yesterday, they
will have to do something similar today if they are not to lose a match that
they looked like winning at lunch on Saturday. A match-turning partnership
between Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena thwarted the bowlers at
their freshest before the prolific Sangakkara extended his extraordinary
recent run with yet another long innings.
It was a seriously bad day for England. Not only could they not break the
crucial partnership, but their fielding became ragged, Matthew Hoggard had
to leave the field with an injured back - he may play no further part on the
tour – and Monty Panesar could not bowl with sufficient menace against
highly accomplished batting. The image of the whole England team lying prone
on the outfield avoiding a swarm of bees, at a time when Sangakkara was
working Sri Lanka into a position from which they could declare with
apparent safety, was sadly symbolic of their dashed expectations.
When the declaration came, they lost Alastair Cook in the first over for the
second time, defeated again by Chaminda Vaas, who is making his mark in his
hundredth Test, just like all the other senior players in Sri Lanka’s
distinguished team. Sangakkara was the hero again yesterday, but he will
expect to hand the baton back to Muttiah Muralitharan in the final push for
victory, with a little help from the retiring Sanath Jayasuriya in his
bowling role, no doubt.
Unless England can find two batsmen to do to Muralitharan what Peter May and
Colin Cowdrey did to Sonny Ramadhin at Edgbaston in 1957, tormenting their
tormentor, the pattern of this series is likely to have been set. It would
be no surprise if Kevin Pietersen, who will bat with the aid of painkillers
and extra protection for his cracked little finger, was telling his
teammates last night that scoring a further 341 runs to win on the last day
today is feasible. Michael Vaughan proved four years ago that saving a game
in Kandy is not impossible, even against Muralitharan, who needs only one
more wicket today for his 100th in Tests against England.
The loss of Hoggard, if for the rest of the series it is, would significantly
reduce England’s chances of hitting back in the second and third Tests if
they lose here, despite a forecast for heavy rain during last night.
Hoggard, comfortably England’s most effective seamer so far, with six
wickets in this game to follow his match-winning spell in Colombo, left the
field suffering from a recurrence of the facet-joint soreness that prevented
him from playing in any of the Tests against India in the second series of
last summer. After 40 Tests without interruption, he had had to stop bowling
in the first Lord’s Test last summer with an adductor muscle injury.
Peter Moores, the England head coach, said that Hoggard’s back problems had
got worse throughout this match. “It’s a facet joint that’s stiff,” Moores
said. “We’ll have to see how it is tomorrow. It’s currently being
manipulated by the physio and we’ll see if it needs anything more aggressive
after that.
“He [felt it] a little bit late on in the first innings, it came back in the
second innings and then he bowled with the second new ball and that
stiffened it up. The first job we’ve got is to get through this match, then
we’ve got three days to assess how fit he’ll be. Fortunately, we’ve got
other seamers out here who are pretty comfortable and bowling well.”
Muralitharan having had his glory on Monday, it was Sangakkara’s turn for a
record yesterday. In making his fourth score of 150 or more in consecutive
Tests, this superbly balanced left-hander, also playing in his home city but
in his case on his old school ground, too, achieved something that no one
has before - innings of 150 or more in four successive Test matches. He
scored his 152 here during another 402 minutes of classical batting, with a
single blemish when he was badly dropped at first slip by Ian Bell off Ryan
Sidebottom on 98.
Sangakkara had suddenly begun to fret at the prospect of reaching his first
hundred against England, one that completed a full set against the eight
other Test nations after his first against Australia in Hobart little more
than a fortnight ago. Of Sangakkara’s 16 hundreds, seven have have been made
in his past nine matches since losing the wicketkeeper’s gloves and six of
those have been in excess of 150, including successive double hundreds
against Bangladesh.
It is quite something when you score 152 and your average worsens, which, as
far as this recent run is concerned, was the case yesterday when he was
brilliantly caught low at mid-wicket by Vaughan to give Paul Collingwood a
second wicket.
By then it had become a case of delaying the declaration for as long as
possible. England badly missed having Hoggard at his best in the crucial
first session. The nearest they came to a breakthrough was when Sangakkara
cut his first ball in the air past Collingwood at second slip and then when
Jayawardena, having taken 16 balls to get off the mark, got a wicked
break-back from James Anderson that flew from a crack. The England close
fielders thought that the ball had glanced a glove en route to Matt Prior,
who took a brilliant left-handed “catch”.
Anderson was unlucky but expensive, Sidebottom steady but innocuous, Panesar
unable to tie down these two talented, technically perfect batsmen. It was
not until the first ball of Hoggard’s second spell, just as the 2½hour
session was closing, that Jayawardena was caught from a thin tickle to leg
by Prior, standing up. Later Prior missed a stumping, but Jehan Mubarak, the
reprieved man, gave Panesar the second of his three wickets soon after.
Vaas and Dilhara Fernando were warned for running on the pitch, but
Jayawardena declared in time for Cook, in his determination not to get too
far across and fall leg before, to edge Vaas’s away swinger to first slip.
The chase is on
Highest fourth-innings run chases at Asgiriya Stadium, Kandy
264-3 India bt Sri Lanka, 2001
183-2 Pakistan bt Sri Lanka, 2006
161-7 England bt Sri Lanka, 2001
95-4 Sri Lanka bt Australia, 1999
10-2 Sri Lanka bt Zimbabwe, 1998
Record chase gathers pace
Kumar Sangakkara, who scored 152 against England yesterday, is having a
phenomenal year. With two Tests left against England before Christmas, the
Sri Lanka No 3 has an average of 184 for 2007 and is likely to end the year
as a record-breaker. The highest end-of-year Test average was 144.13 by
Garry Sobers in 1958. Apart from Sobers, only Ricky Ponting (2003) and Don
Bradman (1948) have scored 1,000 runs in a year and averaged 100. Will
Sangakkara, who needs 79 runs to reach 1,000 in the year, top them all?
The second-best batsman in history?
Across his career, Sangakkara averages 57, thirteenth on the all-time list,
but he played 47 of his 69 Tests as a wicketkeeper. In the 22 matches in
which he has played purely as a batsman, Sangakkara’s average is 96.40,
second only to Don Bradman’s 99.94
By making a hundred yesterday, Sangakkara has become the ninth batsman to
score hundreds against all nine other Test nations. The previous eight were:
Gary Kirsten, above left, Steve Waugh, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid,
Marvan Atapattu, Brian Lara, Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting
He needs 15 more runs to become the fourth Sri Lankan to get to 6,000 after
Sanath Jayasuriya, Aravinda de Silva and Mahela Jayawardena. If he gets the
runs in his next innings, he would be the fourth fastest man to reach 6,000
runs, behind Don Bradman, Garry Sobers and Wally Hammond
“The Streak”
In his past nine Tests, Sangakkara has scored 1,529 runs at an average of
152.9, which includes six scores of more than 150, including a record four
in his past four Tests. If Rudi Koertzen hadn’t wrongly given him out in
Hobart last month, how high could he have gone?
Words by Patrick Kidd
