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5.1 overs: England 20-0 (Duckett 16, Lawrence 0) Vishwa is replaced by Kumara after only a couple of overs. His first delivery, a short ball down the leg side, beats Duckett’s attempted pull, then wobbles nastily and hits Chandimal on the end of of the finger. He’s in a bit of pain and the physio is coming on.
5th over: England 18-0 (Duckett 16, Lawrence 0) Duckett clatters a wide ball from Asitha behind square for three. He’s so dangerous, even when conditions are in the bowling team’s favour, because he can demoralise you so quickly.
Lawrence is still on nought after 10 balls, though theer’s no sign of him getting flustered.
4th over: England 15-0 (Duckett 13, Lawrence 0) Dan Lawrence is on his home ground but there’s nothing comforting about these conditions. He’s effectively an alien, opening the batting against the moving ball, and he is again beaten when he tries to work Vishwa to leg.
Lawrence starts to leave the ball after that, including one delivery that bursts from a length and almost hits Chandimal in the face. He manages to parry it for a bye. It’s actually Chandimal who is keeping, not Kusal Mendis.
Vishwa fails to adjust his line for Duckett, who clips crisply through square leg for four and flicks the next ball past midwicket for three. He’s surely the busiest opener England have ever had.
3rd over: England 6-0 (Duckett 6, Lawrence 0) Three strokes of luck for Duckett. First he is beaten, trying to smash Asitha into a different postcode; then he bottom-edges just past off stump and away for four; and finally he pushes warily at a beauty and is beaten. Duckett has quietly had a modest summer so he could also do with some runs. Not that he’s under any pressure for his place at this stage.
“Surely it isn’t surprising Josh Hull has an enormous ceiling, given how tall he is?” writes Smylers. “I’d’ve thought it’s something most people of his height would look for in a property, so they don’t keep banging their heads.”
It was only a matter of time.
2nd over: England 2-0 (Duckett 2, Lawrence 0) The left-armer Vishwa Fernando, brought back into the side, shares the new ball. In the past this would have been the kind of morning on which you want to leave as much as possible, but England aren’t wired that way. Dan Lawrence, who needs runs, is beaten by a beautiful full-length delivery, on off stump and moving away.
“You are going to have a tough time deciphering which Fernando bowled and which Mendis took the catch,” writes Krishnamoorthy V. “Best of luck with that. As if the existing dread of a typo is not daunting enough, another layer of complexity has been added to your tasks.”
Don’t worry, Krish: I’m a class act. (Also, Vishwa Fernando is a left-armer and Kusal Mendis is the keeper, so any old moron could tell them apart.)
1st over: England 1-0 (Duckett 1, Lawrence 0) No compromise from Duckett, who throws his hands at the third ball of the game and is beaten. He misjudged the length more than anything. There’s a touch of inswing for Asitha, nothing dramatic, and Duckett gets off the mark with a leading edge into the off side.
Thanks to Wayne Trotman for today’s TMS overseas link.
Asitha Fernando will open the bowling to Ben Duckett. It’s overcast and muggy, a perfect time to bowl.
Asitha Fernando with a delivery to Duckett as Dan Lawrence readies to move. Photograph: Graham Hunt/ProSports/Shutterstock“I’m another with very fond memories of 2004,” writes Will Vignoles. “As a 14-year-old, West Indies at Lord’s was the first time I went to a Test. there was brilliant cricket throughout, but the thing that really stuck in the memory from that summer was the return of Simon Jones.
“There’s a chance that this is all a fever dream caused by my now advanced age but I remember him bowling a ridiculous spell of reverse swing that only brought a couple of wickets but he seemed to beat the bat multiple times every over. He used it to much more devastating effect the following year of course, but that was a properly eye-opening moment. Probably the biggest what-if player for England of the 21st century?”
Without doubt. 26 years old when he walked off at Trent Bridge in 2005.
“I, for one, have very fond memories of that 2004 summer (and not just because of the Edgbaston dressing up trophy that still adorns my living room),” says Tom Hopkins. “Peak Freddie, efficiently chasing down (for the time) some stiff targets and a growing sense of ‘hey, we could actually do something against Australia’. I guess sometimes shadows can be cast forwards in time.”
I guess even when it’s about the destination, the journey can be all sorts of fun. The win in South Africa, when England were nowhere near their best, would have been the highlight of previous decades.
Team newsSri Lanka have picked the extra seamer, with Vishwa Fernando replacing the left-arm spinner Prabath Jayasuriya. Kusal Mendis also returns in place of the out-of-form Nishan Madushka.
England Duckett, Lawrence, Pope (c), Root, Brook, Smith (wk), Woakes, Atkinson, Stone, Hull, Bashir.
Sri Lanka Karunaratne, Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Mathews, Chandimal (wk), Dhananjaya (c), Kamindu Mendis, Rathnayake, V Fernando, A Fernando, Kumara.
Sri Lanka win the toss and bowlNow then, this’ll be a good test for England’s openers.
It’s dry (for now) and overcast at The Oval, a bowl-first day and no mistake.
Wanna play for England? Well you’d better start averaging 60 with the ball in first-class cricket. Josh Hull, 20, follows Shoaib Bashir in being picked on attributes rather than averages. And what attributes they are: 6ft 7ins, left-armer, bowls high 80s mph, swings it into the right-hander. In the parlance of our time, his ceiling is enormous.
Hull has just been presented with his Test cap by Andrew Flintoff. If you want to feel really old, he turned 1 during the 2005 Ashes.
PreambleThere are certain things that don’t come naturally to English people. Eye contact, relaxation – and winning every Test in a home summer. That’s for those ruthless MFs down under. In home seasons of at least five Tests, there have been 17 cases of teams winning every game:
8 Australia
3 South Africa
2 England, West Indies
1 India, Sri Lanka
England’s two clean sweeps were in 1959, when they thrashed a poor India side 5-0, and 2004. Michael Vaughan’s team beat New Zealand 3-0 and West Indies 4-0, an achievement for which they probably don’t receive enough credit. The 2005 Ashes casts a long shadow.
England hope the 2025-26 Ashes will do likewise. That’s been the focus of this summer, which makes their five consecutive wins even more notable. Easy to say they should always beat West Indies and Sri Lanka at home, but before this summer they’d done so only twice in their history: 1928 and 2004. (We’re not including the two-Test series of 2009.)
The weather has helped. Or rather, had helped. There’s a yellow warning for rain at The Oval today, so there could be a delayed start. The forecast, though never utopian, gets better as the match progresses so there should be plenty of time for a result: either a demonstration of England’s new ruthlessness, or a reminder that they will be forever England.