A thrashing on questionable conditions
England got off to a disastrous start to the tour of Sri Lanka in the opening one dayer at Dambulla. At nine wickets down for sixty seven the visitors were in danger of crumbling to their lowest ever one day international score. Thanks to the best partnership of the innings at that stage between Giles and Anderson, the Englishmen were saved of that embarrassment.

Michael Vaughan's team performed poorly during the sixty overs of cricket that was witnessed. They are a new outfit having made many changes after the world cup that ended in March this year. They are very short of experience.

Sri Lanka boasts of Marvan Atapattu (200), Sanath Jayasuriya (307), Mahela Jayawardane (147), Upul Chandana (105), Muttiah Muralitharan (223), Chaminda Vaas (227), Romesh Kaluwitharana (186) and Kumar Sangakkara (95). On the opposite side of the scale England's top bracket are, Michael Vaughan (36), Paul Collingwood (39), Andrew Flintoff (63), Ashley Giles (33), James Anderson (24), Chris Read (20). No need bothering even to draw any comparison! Jayasuriya, Muralitharan and Vaas have each individually played more games than all six of these combined.

Then, in the most important of factors - playing conditions - the home team, always has the advantage and in this case a major advantage, with the visitors not very familiar with sub-continent conditions. They did spend some time in Bangladesh, got valuable practice and acclimatised themselves. The quality of the opposition was of no comparison.

That was glaringly evident. The Englishmen who hooked so good and so powerful in their encounters a few weeks prior were made to look like novices. The opening 10 overs of the game knocked them so hard that they were too punch drunk to revive. There wasn't a semblance of a fight back at anytime thereafter.

It was a good toss to lose. England won the toss, elected to bat and plunged into difficulty straight away. Experts and pundits can often cause confusion and they certainly did on this occasion. They predicted that 250 runs would be a good score. They also predicted that the ball will swing most when the lights come on later in the evening.

The ball swung in the air in the first hour - naturally being new - but off the pitch some deliveries were unplayable, some deliveries stopped on the batsman, some deliveries kept low, whilst others bounced more than expected. It was vastly different to what the batsmen anticipated. To add to that the ball spun prodigiously when the spinners came into the attack. Upul Chandana who does not derive much spin off the surface, turned it square! Naturally Murali was difficult to handle.

This left the inexperienced Englishmen in a dilemma. Attack or defend? When do we accelerate? How many runs is a sufficient score? The average first innings score in ODI's played at that venue to that date was 166. That would also have dropped by much after England's paltry 88 runs. The fact has been established that batting first in Dambulla means trouble. Not good for the venue should it get the reputation that the toss of the coin decided the fate of the game.

England did not bowl well in the few overs that Sri Lanka took to reach their target. When the ball did land on the correct spot for the bowlers it did seem to play more fairly for the batsmen, when Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana were at the crease.

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