England show ability to ‘win ugly’ but Sri Lanka will be no pushovers

The first match of this summer’s second Test series presented an intriguing contrast with the corresponding fixture against West Indies last month. England won them both, romping to victory at Lord’s in their first home game of the year by an innings and 114 runs after an hour’s play on the third day, while on Saturday at Old Trafford Joe Root scored the runs that sealed success against Sri Lanka, by a five‑wicket margin, at the very end of the fourth day.

Jimmy Anderson’s retirement meant the game at Lord’s was imbued inevitably with a nostalgic sentimentality, but the final moments at Old Trafford were lent a sepia hue only by the setting sun. For all that England were carried across the finish line by a man playing his 144th game, this felt like a forward-facing team, led for the first time by the 26-year-old Ollie Pope and with the man of the match award collected by Jamie Smith, the 24-year-old Surrey wicketkeeper who has played so thrillingly in his inaugural Test summer.

Related: ‘It’s about getting the job done’: Pope happy with England’s cautious chase

The two games started with the tourists batting first and poorly – West Indies were reduced to 88 for seven, Sri Lanka to 92 for six – but there the similarities ended. It is not necessarily an indication of quality – and some will prefer brief and emphatic wins to more drawn‑out and marginal successes – but England spent the fourth day of their most recent outing being teased and stretched by opponents who forced them to fight for the very last run. The fourth day of the Lord’s Test was spent on the golf course.

Root did have golf on his mind on Saturday, and not only in his determination not to let the game drift into Sunday. His was an unusual innings – across his Test career he has on average scored a boundary off every 16th ball, but here it took him 95 to get his first, and of his 49-run partnership with Harry Brook he contributed just 15, off 51 deliveries.

“It was the pitch more than anything,” he said.

“It was a very slow, turgid pitch, it lost all of its pace. The outfield was longer than the semi-rough at most golf courses as well, so that didn’t help.”

Sri Lanka came into the game having played (and emphatically lost) one warm-up match, complaining that they had wanted several more, and then started it poorly. In that context what followed was hugely exciting. But for a puzzling dip in the first session of day three they performed excellently: Asitha Fernando and Prabath Jayasuriya probed and tested with the ball, the leadership of Dhananjaya de Silva – himself in only his fourth game as captain – was positive and enterprising, and in Kamindu Mendis they have a young batter who in both technique and mentality seems perfect for Test cricket, as a record of three centuries and two 50s in his first seven innings in the format suggests. With the benefit of this experience they will expect to be more competitive still in the two remaining games.

Meanwhile England continue to evolve, with the 20-year-old Josh Hull adding another injection of youth to the squad for the team’s return to Lord’s in the second Test starting on Thursday. This win was not achieved in the style for which they have become known since the appointment of Brendon McCullum as head coach two years ago, which is one of the reasons why they were particularly proud of it.

“These conditions are not probably what you’d expect even at this part of the season here in England,” Root said. “So for us to be able to adapt and almost win ugly, it’s not something we want to do consistently but to say we’re able to do that, and with a day still to go as well, shows we’re still living by all the principles we want to, but we’re evolving and learning to manage the game better and read the situation as well.”

Related: England call up 6ft 7in Josh Hull after Mark Wood limps out of Sri Lanka series

After the withdrawal of Mark Wood, who sustained a thigh strain on day three, Root is now the second-oldest member of the squad at 33. “The guys keep you young more than anything,” he said.

“In this job you can be a bit like Peter Pan, you never really have to grow up, because you just think you’re the same age as the blokes around you. A really nice thing about it is we all get on really well, even if we do take the mick out of each other. I mean, Brooky calling me grandad the other day … 33 is a good effort to be a grandad.”

At one stage on the opening day, Root and the 25-year-old Brook found themselves racing to chase down a ball as it rolled towards the boundary. “Oh my god it was so funny, he was just saying: ‘Don’t let me catch you!’ – as if we were playing a village game or whatever,” Root said. “That’s what you want, you want it to be fun, you want to have a laugh out there, and sometimes it’s nice to forget that there’s a bit on the line and you can just enjoy it. We were able to do that, which is a really good place to be.”

After such an encouraging start to the series, Lord’s on Thursday will feel like a good place to be as well.