Paul Collingwood and Matt Prior resumed England’s first innings on the second morning of the second Test today with a lot of work to do to justify Michael Vaughan’s brave decision to bat first. All in the visiting team’s dressing-room badly need to forget the controversy and their undoubted ill-fortune on the opening day.

Only 258 runs at a rate of little less than three an over, and a mere five wickets, may suggest a banal start to the match rather than the fascinating, strange and disputatious one it actually was. It included a brilliant innings by Vaughan, cruelly cut short by bad or good luck, according to your viewpoint; a sober and dedicated one by Alastair Cook; a strangely subdued one by Ian Bell; and the briefest of appearances by Kevin Pietersen before he was sent on his way after an instinctive piece of teamwork by Chamara Silva and Kumar Sangakkara. It added another to the list of bizzare Test wickets, not to mention technology-induced umpiring disputes.

By the end of the day, Vaughan was less concerned with his own malign fate than with Pietersen’s. “The decision should have been referred to the third umpire,” Vaughan said, risking official displeasure for commenting so forthrightly. “Common sense should have prevailed. We’ve got the technology, let’s use it. We’re talking about big decisions, big games of cricket.”

Pietersen’s dismissal was certainly freakish, but it was the result of a loose drive played to only his fifth ball, against Chaminda Vaas bowling well wide of his off stump from over the wicket. To that extent, Pietersen got his just desserts, but at the same time he, like his captain, might have been unlucky. The outside edge flew low to second slip where Silva got his left hand to the ball and scooped it up. He juggled with it as his body turned towards Sangakkara, moving right from first slip, and, like a scrum half making a flip pass from the base of the scrum, conveyed the ball into Sangakkara’s right hand.

That this was deft teamwork is not in doubt. Whether the two umpires, conferring, should have given Pietersen out without consulting the television umpire is. ICC guidelines encourage the men in the middle to make their own minds up. The replay from the vantage point of Daryl Harper, the umpire, suggested that Silva had grounded the ball in his first attempt to catch it, but history proves that replays can fib. The reverse angle suggested the initial catch was a close thing, but legitimate.

Two new-ball wickets for Lasith Malinga, the first the consequence of a second questionable decision by Harper made Sri Lanka’s close-of-play position far better than it might have been. That was not because they lost the toss — Mahela Jayawardena would have fielded anyway and for good reason — but because Vaughan, after an uncertain start, was in handsome command when he turned an off break from Muttiah Muralitharan from the middle of his bat into the midriff of Jehan Mubarak at short leg.

The ball slid down, stuck between Mubarak’s knees and Vaughan, unable to believe that, having returned to his most sublime form, his fun was over for the day and he had to go. After a few early plays-and-misses, he had hit the ball to the boundary 12 times, off either foot and on both sides of the wicket, all with perfect timing. Not until Collingwood and Prior got together late in the day did any batsman look even remotely as fluent.

Cook shared the first opening partnership of more than a hundred for England in 15 Tests, but his was a long and difficult labour as well as a noble and patient one. He hit some fine shots through mid-wicket and extra cover between long periods of careful defence, but needed almost 100 more balls (234 to Vaughan’s 139) to score six fewer runs.

Vaas and Malinga had had no luck with the new ball when it was swinging and bouncing in the first hour amid classic mosquito weather, muggy and humid. Soon everyone, Muralitharan not excluded, was feeling the weight and timing of Vaughan’s bat, but the off spinner’s accuracy and variations kept the batsmen chained to the crease once the England captain had gone in the eleventh over of the afternoon.

Cook’s cautious alliance with Bell, who was curiously diffident given how well he had played in Kandy, enabled Sri Lanka to seize back the initiative, helped by the steadiness of Vaas and fine ground fielding. Six overs after tea, Bell was caught superbly off bat and pad by Mubarak, diving to his right. But, with the Pietersen debate still raging, Cook was given out late in the day to a ball that barely pitched on leg stump, if at all, and would surely have swung past the wicket. That poor piece of umpiring cost England two wickets in effect, because Ravi Bopara’s first ball was a swinging yorker that hit middle and off.

The last four teams to bat first in a Test at the SSC have not got beyond 285. Presumably, England, having left out James Anderson to accommodate their two tallest fast bowlers, are hoping for uneven bounce later, but there was not a suspicion of it yesterday.