Key events
On Sky, the first Oasis song of the day is ringing out. “It’s Lord’s, we’ve gotta go for Champagne Supernova, haven’t we?”
The first email has landed and it’s from our old friend Gary Naylor. “I suspect that there will not be swathes of empty seats on the fourth day – if MCC prices tickets correctly,” he says. “Fifth day ticket prices is something that cricket has got right in recent years and surely the flexibility shown with cut-price seats should extend to other days if advance sales look thin? After all, the overheads are fixed and there’s money to be made on the merch and refreshments. No doubt people who paid ‘full price’ weeks ago might quibble, but that’s the nature of the beast.” Hmm, flexibility … not always MCC’s middle name.
The teams
As both captains showed their hand yesterday, it’s a Radiohead team sheet: no surprises. Olly Stone replaces the injured Mark Wood, while Sri Lanka make two changes – Pathum Nissanka for Kusal Mendis, to try and avoid being 6 for 3; and Lahiru Kamara for Vishwa Fernando, to add weight to the seam bowling.
England 1 Ben Duckett, 2 Dan Lawrence, 3 Ollie Pope (capt), 4 Joe Root, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Jamie Smith (wkt), 7 Chris Woakes, 8 Gus Atkinson, 9 Matthew Potts, 10 Olly Stone, 11 Shoaib Bashir.
Sri Lanka 1 Dimuth Karunaratne, 2 Nishan Madushka (wkt), 3 Pathum Nissanka, 4 Angelo Mathews, 5 Dinesh Chandimal, 6 Dhananjaya de Silva (capt), 7 Kamindu Mendis, 8 Milan Rathnayake, 9 Prabath Jayasuriya, 10 Asitha Fernando, 11 Lahiru Kumara
Toss: Sri Lanka win and bowl first
Dhananjaya de Silva calls right and chooses to bat first puts England in. Perhaps he can see clouds overhead that nobody else has spotted.
Preamble
Morning everyone and welcome to the Lord’s Test. That seems an odd thing to be saying at the end of August, and on closer inspection this match turns out to be the second-latest Test ever staged at Lord’s (after England v West Indies 2017, which began on 7 September). The more senior members of MCC will be in grave danger of slipping on the first conker of autumn. But the weather gods have decided to pretend that it’s still high summer: not till Monday afternoon does the chance of rain in any given hour go above 10 per cent.
For Ollie Pope’s England team, there’s a series to be won after they crept to victory at Old Trafford in a style to which they are now unaccustomed. For Sri Lanka, who lost that match but won acclaim for their tenacity, there’s a jolt of pressure, which could be bracing: they simply have to win this time. For MCC, there will be swathes of empty seats if the game goes into a fourth day. That Test in 2017 didn’t make it to a third tea-break as West Indies scored 300 in both their innings combined, but a line-up with Kamindu Mendis down at No 7 can surely do better than that.
Play starts at 11am UK time and I’ll be back 25 minutes before that with news of the toss.
