This is looking suspiciously like Sri Lanka's payback. Largely ignored by England since they attained full Test status 17 years ago, and patronised when they have not been ignored, the world champions have played their way to a position of dominance at The Oval England will need to work monumentally hard to escape.
From Friday evening, when Sanath Jayasuriya began his merciless double-century dissection of the England bowling, torment has been heaped upon torment, the screw turned ever tighter.
First it was by the Sri Lankan batting, which racked up a first-innings lead of 146, and then, in the final session yesterday, by the genius of Muthiah Muralitharan, whose off-spinners floated gently down like parachute bombs only to explode on impact. Chunterings about the legality of his action are sounding like very sour grapes.
By the close England had reached 54 for two, still 92 short of saving an innings defeat, with Steve James and Alec Stewart clinging on grimly.
In successive overs from Muralitharan, Mark Butcher, who gamely tried to take him on, was seduced down the pitch to be stumped in a manner as easy as flying a kite on Galle Face Green, and two balls later Graeme Hick was lbw on the back foot without scoring, his first-innings century already a thing of distant memory.
James, here because of Mike Atherton's injured back and trying all he knew to fill the usual England anchorman's shoes, made it through all 42 overs so far in reaching 20. But it was tenacity rather than technique that helped him survive Muralitharan.
At the other end Stewart, who ended on 15, was blocking and kicking and increasingly becoming irritated by Romesh Kaluwitharana behind the stumps.
When two, in Jayasuriya's first over of left-arm spin, Stewart survived a confident appeal for a bat-pad catch to silly mid-off. In Muralitharan's next over, Kaluwitharana's enthusiastic lbw appeal led to words being exchanged and the intervention of umpire David Shepherd.
On such a pitch - no pace and with all the growth potential of a Muscovite's investment bond - Sri Lanka can dominate anyone. Their batsmen, Jayasuriya and Aravinda de Silva in particular, have scored at such a rate here that their 591 took 10 balls fewer than England's 445.
That lent them time, but the real difference between the sides is Muralitharan. In such conditions there are few spinners in the world who can wreak the same sort of havoc. England certainly do not have one.
Ian Salisbury, having sought a Test wicket for almost 60 overs this summer, managed to sign off with a success yesterday, but it was a belated one to end the Sri Lankan innings.
