Olly Stone proves England’s bowling depth is in rude health

No James Anderson, no Stuart Broad, no Mark Wood. Yet their successors or replacements rolled Sri Lanka over for no more than 196.

It would not be correct to say that the new generation of England pace bowlers has taken over seamlessly, because no Test bowler could function without a seam. But they have slotted in skilfully, and so effectively that both Olly Stone and Matthew Potts dismissed two Sri Lankan batsmen in one over.

Stone also had to take on the job of delivering sacks of coal by hand, the equivalent of bowling bouncers in Wood’s absence. Stone’s efforts to replicate Bodyline led to the most spectacular cricket of the entire Sri Lankan innings, for what it was, when Joe Root floored a skyer and Kamindu Mendis was both hit on the helmet then hit a spectator in the pavilion with a top-edged hook.

Stone was expensive in carrying out this brief, but ran in straight and kept everything going straight with the minimum of twisting. He had more stress-fracture operations, four, than Test caps before this game. Aged 30, he has spent more time running on treadmills in rehab than on the greensward.

This is testimony to his spirit as well as the allure of England central contracts. The moment they could no longer bowl a thousand overs per summer, express bowlers of yore, like Alan Ward of Derbyshire and five England caps, were usually given the postcode for the local rubbish tip – and not the recycling section.

Stone swift and straight

Stone never threatened to surpass Wood for speed – it would be unfair to compare anyone to Wood, a unique phenomenon, other than Jofra Archer – but he operated in the high 80s mph. Stone could not quite replicate Wood’s outswing either: his lateral movement was less, an inch or so up or down the slope, but these are the batting conditions of high summer. Like a man preparing for a long weekend of trekking, this pitch has been shaved to last four or five days.

In Stone’s fifth over, which spanned lunch, he dismissed left-handed opener Dimuth Karunaratne chopping on, then the right-handed Pathum Nissanka, oblivious to the trap, caught glancing to leg-slip. Posting slips to one side, and a leg-slip and short-leg to the other, allowed Stone to be straight yet challenging.

However, when Sri Lanka’s other opening batsman, Nishan Madushka, also played at the new ball with a bat at 45 degrees and dragged on, one did think back to their inaugural Test in England at Lord’s in 1984. Sri Lanka had only recently ceased to be Ceylon; their cricketers had just ceased to be weekend club cricketers still wet around the ears; it was less than a decade before that they had first heard sledging, introduced courtesy of Tony Greig’s England in 1976-77. But goodness, they knew how to hold a bat.

Missionaries from Cambridge and Oxford taught Sri Lankan boys how to play straight in their schools in Colombo and Kandy. From England they had brought sacred texts, like CB Fry’s book on batting or the MCC coaching manual, to prove they were right. The shots with a bat at 45 degrees by Sri Lanka’s openers here, and Angelo Mathews’ attempt at clipping a straight half-volley to leg, would have been severely punished.

Lord’s legacy squandered

Potts was to bowl much better from round the wicket to left-handers – everything kept heading towards the stumps – than he had at Old Trafford when he bowled too wide at them. He is an all-rounder in the making, who had earlier escorted Gus Atkinson to his maiden hundred, and had chipped in with that catch at leg-slip – quick footwork as well as hands – before dismissing Mathews and the touring captain Dhananjaya de Silva in the same over.

Both Sri Lankans were old enough to know better than to work straight balls from the Nursery end up the slope. It looked spectacular when Potts shaped one down the slope and brushed off stump but a forward defensive by Mathews would have sufficed.

Strange as it may sound when they are so far behind in this game, Sri Lanka took into this Test a fine batting record at Lord’s. Starting in 1984, when they ran England ragged, they had averaged 38 runs per wicket. Not only in their inaugural Test, their batsmen had paraded the gorgeousness of Sri Lankan batsmanship, not least when they ground Andrew Flintoff into the dust here. Only South Africa, in that timespan, had averaged more per wicket at Lord’s (39).

This inheritance has been squandered, except for Kamindu Mendis, left to tend the flame.