Curtain falls on Dan Lawrence’s opening career with wildest innings England have seen

It was the wildest innings ever played by an England opening batsman. Data does not extend to the dawn of Test cricket in 1877 but we can be certain that WG Grace, Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Geoffrey Boycott, Alastair Cook and their opening partners never played – between the whole lot of them in their entire careers – so many wild hacks as Dan Lawrence in his run-a-ball innings of 35.

“A hard watch at times,” Cook commented on Test Match Special with some feeling. Lawrence’s innings, more than any other aspect of their gung-ho cricket, encapsulated the hyper-aggression which England brought into this game, confident of turning their summer into a 6-0 sweep.

Cook had watched Lawrence grow at Chelmsford from the time he scored 161 against Surrey at the Oval, aged 17, in his second first-class match. Lawrence became “The Kid” in Essex’s side; such is his keenness, his obsession with batting, you can understand that avuncular feeling of older team-mates. He had no hinterland in Chingford, as son of the club groundsman; cricket is what he knows.

Most observers too probably felt like Cook: that Lawrence departed so far from the norms of opening a Test innings that the way he played was unforgivable as well as unprecedented - that Lawrence did not simply run towards the danger, as Brendon McCullum urges his players to do, but threw himself upon the pyre. He was more dashing even than Ben Duckett, more skittish even than Ollie Pope at the start of an innings away from the Oval.

Still, we have to rationalise this wildest of innings until the truth emerges after this match. We could assume along these lines: One, Lawrence was told before this match, or even this series, that he was guaranteed a place in England’s Test party to Pakistan next month, however he fared as an emergency opener in place of Zak Crawley. Two, This regime will stand by that promise. Three, Lawrence might never be asked to open an England Test innings again but he will return to being first in line as a replacement in the middle order if injury or illness strikes in Pakistan.

In running down the pitch to his first ball, with England’s first-innings lead 62, Lawrence was interpreting his brief to put pressure on Sri Lanka’s bowlers in his own way. The ball swung more on day three than on the two previous days, though it was the sunniest, and therefore Sri Lanka’s bowlers were going to pitch a fuller length; the best way to counter this swing was go down the pitch and take lbw out of the equation. Note what was to happen when the left-armer Vishwa Fernando pinned Joe Root and Harry Brook leg-before: they let him bowl a full length and paid the price.

A succession of shots of the highest risk ensued. Lawrence ran down the pitch to launch over cover. He reined himself in for four balls after Duckett had given mid-on a soft catch, then resumed the high-risk hitting, or slogging. Pope was also dismissed within the first eight overs but old-school thinking about leaving the new ball, or giving the first hour to the bowler, or a few quick singles to build a partnership – no such tenet seemed to merit consideration. It was the earth-bound equivalent of wild swimming: wild batting.

What was undisputedly illogical was that when Lawrence skipped down the pitch he looked to hit legside more than offside – and the fact the new ball was shaping away from his bat made these wild hits even riskier. But his strength has always been his bottom-handed hitting to leg; his attempts to bat like a traditional Test opener had resulted in no more than 85 runs in five innings as Crawley’s replacement.

Walking way across to the offside, to a straight ball that only just went over his stumps, might have set a new national record – for the craziest shot ever by an England opener, according to traditional thinking. Learn from this experience and throttle back, or enjoy the luck and press on? Lawrence’s reaction was to give himself a slightly better chance by driving six over long-off and four through the covers, not hoicking to leg, but that was his sole compromise.

There was a major point to be made against Lawrence playing the way he did: by throwing the bat from the outset of their innings England left their pace bowlers only 34 overs in which to recuperate. Chris Woakes and Gus Atkinson, if they had been electric vehicles, would have been suffering range anxiety in their third Test in quick succession, while Josh Hull had exerted his young body to the limit in the morning.

But what was the point in Lawrence playing like his illustrious predecessors and trying to be what he is not? England were six wickets down by the 18th over, and might well have been reeling whichever way Lawrence had played. To make him open in this series, as a reward for doing the 12th man job for a couple of years, was to stuff a square peg into the round hole. But it has to be said the peg played as it thought best, in the context of the culture that now prevails.