England continued to expose Sri Lanka’s taken-for-granted attitude in living on past laurels as Kevin Pietersen and Alistair Cook took their side to a possible victory in the third and final cricket Test on a day in which even rain could not offer a place for the tourists to hide here at the Rose Bowl stadium here in Southampton yesterday.
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| Kevin Pietersen on his way to score 85. |
As has been the case the opening pace duo of Chanaka Welagedera and Suranga Lakmal picked an early wicket each but the supplementary pacemen Dilhara Fernando and Thisara Perera were mere household sweep-aways as Pietersen and Cook and then followed by Ian Bell made a joke of the Sri Lankan bowlers.
Fernando may have batted well for 39 and picked up a wicket to break a century stand between Cook and Pietersen due more to batsman error, but he was no different from what he was in the Lord’s Test and took it even further by bowling four no-balls that has been the scourge of his career. Thisara Perera who could not even bat in Sri Lanka’s first innings needed nothing more to prove that he was a total misfit in Test cricket as he bowled in some friendly timid stuff that the England batsmen feasted on to signal that they were pushing for a win that would put them on course to become the word’s best test team.
Perera bowled down as many as 78 balls from 13 overs and only two of the deliveries looked to trouble the batsmen with most of the rest way outside the off-stump. That he claimed the wicket of Pietersen had more to do with the batsman losing his concentration and slashing at a ball wide outside the off-stump.
Overall the day’s proceedings only extended reluctant skipper Kumar Sangakkara’s inability to even set a field to stop the runs as Cook in particular pierced the gaps with comfortable ease.
More than three hours of play was lost but England still took a lead of 11 runs after bowling out Sri Lanka for 185 and replying with 195 for 4.
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