By Srian Obeyesekere
Sri Lanka will certainly face the double hurdle of atoning for the loss to lesser opposition in the England Lions that represent the cream of the Brits youth cricket when Dhananjaya de Silva to getting the better of an obviously stronger mettle England even though they will be without their key performer the injury sidelined skipper Ben Stokes tomorrow August 21 at the Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester.
Certainly overriding that big challenge will be the tall order before Dhananjaya and his team that is a combination of experienced youth which will of course, shrug off that warm-up defeat as a customary first of firsts acclimation formalities.
Having said that, the Lankans, who last bled England to a series win in the Brits backyard, will be looking to exploit to the hilt the absence of England’s center piece Stokes given a comparative upper hand on experience as against a new look opposition but for veteran Joe Root and Chris Woakes when the two sides last met. Stalwarts in the likes of opener Dimuth Karunaratne, veteran Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, the explosive Kusal Mendis and a resolute leader in Dhananjaya de Silva whose strongest point is his ability to click in the worst of situations makes up a strong batting line-up with Nishan Madushka, pairing with Karunaratne steely stuff, and Kamindu Mendis boasting of world cricket’s only batsman to hit twin test centuries on debut. Both Madushka and Kamindu Mendis come from Sri Lanka’s young brigade.
Sri Lanka would be banking on the 47 century beefing that Mathews, Karunaratne and Chandimal boast of between them with the first two 16 each and Chandimal 15 while skipper Dhananjaya has a good 12-ton record.
Sri Lanka would look to Prabath Jayasuriya’s leg spin as a trump up to trump England at Old Trafford.
The Lankans will be looking to better a 8-17 head to head Test disparity with England having eight wins at home to the touring team’s three wins with 7 drawn. Both Karunaratne and Mathews have scored 12 test centuries apiece respectively.
England will be led by stand in captain 26-year old Ollie Pope who has 46 test outings and scored 2690 runs from 81 innings with 6 hundreds in his first shy at that with the experienced Zak Crawley too unavailable for this series.
Besides Joe Root’s flattering average of 58.88 against Sri Lanka, currently Ben Duckett has a tally of 521 test runs this year at an average and strike rate of 37.21 and 88.
England are currently seventh in the 2023-25 ICC World Test Championship standings with six wins and as many defeats and 1 draw.
Sri Lanka is fourth with a PCT of 50% with two wins and as many defeats having defeated Bangladesh 2-0 earlier this year.
Sri Lanka (Probable XI): Dimuth Karunaratne, Nishan Madushka, Kusal Mendis (wk), Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, Dhananjaya de Silva (c), Kamindu Mendis, Prabath Jayasuriya, Vishwa Fernando, Kasun Rajitha, Lahiru Kumara.
England (Probable XI): Dan Lawrence, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (c), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Matthew Potts, Gus Atkinson, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir.
