Sri Lanka come back from the dead

John Mehaffey

Cricket: Two nights ago, Sri Lanka wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara was asked to assess his side's chances of saving the first test against England at Lord's. At that stage, with Sri Lanka following on after conceding a 359-run first innings deficit, the question was roughly equivalent to asking a boxer how he felt he would fare after three first-round knockdowns.

"If we do get out of it," Sangakkara replied, "it will be one of the great escapes in test cricket." On Monday, a young, untried team, who have rarely been successful away from home, were celebrating a draw with the team who defeated the all-conquering Australians last year.

Most, but no means all, of the credit goes to captain Mahela Jayawardene. Jayawardene emerged from the wreckage of the first innings with a fighting 61, showing technique and application lacking in his team mates. His second innings effort was one of the great defensive knocks in test history, more than six hours of patient resolution for 119 runs. With the benefit of eight dropped catches added to the solitary miss by Geraint Jones in the Sri Lanka first innings, the visitors eventually totalled a Lord's record second innings 537 for nine.

To nobody's surprise Jayawardene was named man-of-the-match, an honour he accepted with customary modesty. "I don't deserve this man of the match award because it was a total team effort," Jayawardene told reporters. "They showed a lot of character. "It was a great achievement for us and gives us a lot of encouragement. We are looking forward to the next test match.

I think there are a lot of areas we can improve but today, I thought, was brilliant. "We had to compete every day, we had to try and save the test match. What we wanted to do was to try and avoid the follow-on and then to get to the fifth day of the test match." England captain Andrew Flintoff, one of the culprits in the field on Monday, said the misses had been bizarre.

"We practise every morning and we take most of the catches in our drills," he said. "It was just bizarre in the way in which it happened. "I thought we bowled well throughout the game but the wicket was a good batting track.

"To bowl Sri Lanka out for 192 was a reflection of the way they batted as opposed to the wicket. "We know Sri Lanka fight and in the second innings they kept going and batting all the way down to keep us in the field for 3-1/2 days."

LONDON, Tuesday Reuters