ON SATURDAY morning, England were going to win the first Test by Saturday evening. Yesterday morning, they were going to win it by teatime. Today, they will need luck with the weather if they are to win it at all. The concentration, determination and sheer class of Mahela Jayawardena, the truest of pitches, too much bowling of the wrong length, too little faith in the possibilities of spin, costly fielding errors and Sri Lankan spirit all had a part to play in the cold douche of reality that was splashed across the face of English cricket over the weekend.

If England manage to finish off the game today despite the threat of some rain and the small problem of having to take the last four wickets before chasing a target, the lessons will be valuable. If they do not, after labouring for 66 overs yesterday to dismiss only Sri Lanka’s nightwatchman and two other batsmen, a great opportunity will have been missed and the three-match series will be still very much alive.

In theory, Sri Lanka remain perilously placed at 22 for six, but England have been forced into a tough final day despite ideal conditions for swing bowling under grey clouds for most of yesterday.

It would be hard to overpraise the concentration and good judgment displayed by the Sri Lanka batsmen in their second innings, especially Jayawardena, a captain leading by supreme example until, in the last short session of a day interrupted three times by bad light, he was blasted out by Andrew Flintoff; caught down the leg side off glove and ribs to give Geraint Jones a belated 100th Test victim.

It was a catch similar to the one off Stephen Harmison that sealed the Edgbaston Test last year, and it is not good news for Sri Lanka that Harmison should be fit again for the second Test after recovering from his sore shin. But if Sri Lanka survive, they are unlikely to be so vulnerable again as they were when this match began, five days after a ten-wicket thrashing by England A, or when they started the third day at 91 for six.

Two straightforward slip catches dropped by Andrew Strauss in each innings, the first before lunch on Saturday when Chaminda Vaas should have become Liam Plunkett’s first Test wicket in England, and more crucially yesterday. when Jayawardena was missed on 58 in the third over with the new ball off Matthew Hoggard, made life far tougher than necessary for the bowlers.

Jayawardena’s 119, compiled in a little more than six hours, his second hundred in successive Lord’s Tests, changed his side’s mood and fortune, greatly helped by the utterly reliable bounce of the pitch and England’s old problem of dropped catches at headquarters.

Apart from Strauss’s errors, Jones missed two tricky ones on Saturday, the first diving right, the second standing up to Monty Panesar. Alastair Cook was unable to hold on to a searing edge at third slip, also on Saturday, and in the same position yesterday morning, Paul Collingwood got his hand to a sixth possible chance, a flying edge from a cut by Farveez Maharoof.

Jayawardena’s partner throughout the morning session and for 2¾ hours in all, was Maharoof, the former under-19 captain, who is close to being a genuine all-rounder.

He needed a good deal of luck outside the off stump, notably against Hoggard and in a most unlucky spell by Plunkett in which he repeatedly beat the outside edge, but all the England fast bowlers found it hard to locate the perfect length and there was too little driving, too much played off the back foot.

That said, Jayawardena set a perfect example in “playing the line”, ignoring anything too wide of his off stump but dealing masterfully with the short ball and constantly rotating the strike by means of quick singles with each of his partners.

The stroke that got him to a hundred, his fourteenth in Tests and fourth against England, was a case in point. He pushed the ball in front of Sajid Mahmood at mid-on, took a chance with a quick single and reaped the benefit of four overthrows as Mahmood’s throw eluded both the unprotected stumps at the bowler’s end and Kevin Pietersen’s dive to cut it off at mid-off.

Only eight batsmen have previously scored more than one hundred against England at Lord’s. In Don Bradman, Garry Sobers and George Headley they include three of the greatest of all time, but Dilip Vengsarkar, who managed three hundreds, Bill Brown, Martin Crowe, Gordon Greenidge and Warren Bardsley all make worthy company, too.

In six hours of impeccable batting, having held up England for 118 balls and 168 minutes in the first innings, he restored Sri Lankan pride and rescued a seriously faltering tour.

Pansesar might have been given more chance to bowl yesterday, after his two important wickets on Saturday, but they were both taken against left-handers with the help of turn from the rough.

Kumar Sangakkara had led the resistance for 156 balls in a fine innings ended by a deft catch off the bottom edge by Jones. Another 39 overs were bowled before Mahmood broke through again yesterday, having Maharoof, driving low to extra cover, then persuading Thilan Samaraweera into a flash outside his off stump, one of the few rash strokes all day.