CRICKET:AS ENGLAND worked their way to a dominant 342 for six on the opening day, down on the Nursery Ground the spectators were stretching out in the tea-time sunshine as a brass band belted out The Entertainer.
Scott Joplin seemed a suitable sort of soundtrack for Eoin Morgan. He is a ragtime batsman, his rhythms are surprising and syncopated. Unlike Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott, Morgan has no respect for the metre of Test cricket.
His innings was only 15 balls old when he decided to take a two-step down the wicket and wallop a six over towards the Warner Stand.
That was off Rangana Herath, Sri Lanka’s roly-poly left-arm spinner. He was in the middle of a parsimonious spell when Morgan came to the crease, his first three overs having cost only five runs.
Morgan took 14 runs from the seven balls Herath bowled to him, the six following on from a lofted drive over mid-off for four. Tillakaratne Dilshan duly yanked Herath out of the attack.
By then Morgan had 18 runs off 19 balls, more than he has made in any of his past six Test innings, a run stretching back to his hundred against Pakistan at Trent Bridge last July.
That was an innings that vindicated the selectors’ faith in him but until yesterday he had done precious little else to assuage the sceptics in the few opportunities he had been given since. For a man who looks to be such a natural in the one-day team it has been an awkward start to a Test career for the 24-year-old from Dublin.
And there are sceptics. Some point to his first-class average – a meagre 38 – and others, Ravi Bopara among them, to his preference for playing in the Indian Premier League rather than on the green grass wickets of the English spring.
It was interesting to see him throttle back after hitting Herath out of the attack. He took only three runs from his next 46 balls, letting Cook take the lead while he fell into a lull. Then all of a sudden he snapped back into life, playing a series of strokes that cut through the babbling hubbub of postprandial conversation and drew forth loud, braying cries of “Shot!” from the crowd.
A delivery from Dilshan was cracked back over the bowler’s head, dumped with a thump into the hoardings in front of the pavilion for another six. Two balls later Morgan played a sublime late cut, one for the connoisseurs and older sages purred in appreciation.
It is not only Bopara and the other pretenders to the number six slot that Morgan is measuring up against. Paul Collingwood’s form in the last few months of his Test career was dire but not so bad as to erase the memories of all the marvellous innings he had played for England over the years that came before.
Collingwood was England’s insurance against a top-order collapse, their emergency service. Morgan is a very different kind of batsman and that has changed the dynamic of the team.
He and Matt Prior are an aggressive pair of players to have coming in at number six seven. Morgan may be the final ingredient England need to kick on towards being the best side in the world, a player who can counter-attack and take the game away from the opposition. He is there to win matches, not save them. But at the same time the number six slot works two ways. He needs to prove he can cope in a crisis, that he can emulate a little of Collingwood’s spirit, if not his style.
England were 130 for four when he came in, a troubling situation if not a terrible one. And Morgan thrived, batting on through the long, hot afternoon until he fell lbw on referral as the day was drawing to a close.
He hardly stopped to acknowledge the applause as he walked off, no doubt irritated to have come up short of his hundred, with only 79. It was not a definitive innings, then, but at least it was an entertaining one.
Morgan and Prior, who was 73 not out at stumps, put on 101 for the sixth wicket, an English record against Sri Lanka after Cook and Ian Bell had earlier put on 108 for the fourth after Andrew Strauss, Trott and Kevin Pietersen has all went cheaply. Bell went for 52 and, most improbably, Cook too, mistiming a pull shot from the front foot that would have brought up an England record sixth hundred in 11 innings.
Sri Lanka won the toss and fielded
ENGLAND FIRST INNINGS
A Strauss lbw b Welegedara 4
A Cook c Maharoof b Fernando 96
J Trott lbw b Lakmal 2
K Pietersen c Dilshan b Lakmal 2
I Bell c Paranavitana b Welegedara 52
E Morgan lbw b Lakmal 79
M Prior not out 73
S Broad not out 17
Extras (b3 lb2 w3 nb9) 17
Total (for 6 wkts, 88 ovs) 342
Fall of wickets: 1-5, 2-18, 3-22, 4-130, 5-201, 6-302.
To Bat: G Swann, C Tremlett, S Finn.
Bowling: C Welegedara 18-4-65-2; S Lakmal 19-2-79-3; F Maharoof 17-5-57-0; D Fernando 13-2-57-1; R Herath 14-1-49-0; T Dilshan 7-1-30-0.
Sri Lanka: T Paranavitana, T Dilshan (capt), K Sangakkara M Jayawardene, T Samaraweera, P Jayawardene (wkts), F Maharoof, C Welegedara, R Herath, D Fernando, S Lakmal.
