England check out with loads of confidence

England check out with loads of confidence
Reuters

Colombo, March 28: England headed home on Wednesday after a largely successful tour of the subcontinent in which their Test triumphs were offset by Sri Lanka’s clean sweep of the one-day international series.

Having won two Test series 1-0 win against Pakistan and 2-1 against Sri Lanka England suffered their worst-ever loss in 325 one-day matches when they were beaten by 10 wickets in the third and final one-day game on Tuesday.

Graham Thorpe, who took over as England captain in the absence of the injured Nasser Hussain, did not appear to have many options as Sri Lanka came back strongly from their test losses. ‘‘Although we have seen an upturn in our fortunes in Test match cricket, it is crystal clear where we stand in one-day cricket at the moment,’’ Thorpe said at the end of the final match.

‘‘Sri Lanka were more skilful than us in the one-day game. It is really in the batting that we failed and that is something that we will have to look at hard. On the positive side we have 18 months till the World Cup and you can quickly improve in one-day cricket,’’ Thorpe said, referring to the championship to be played in South Africa in 2003.

England’s batsmen, who tackled the off-spin of Muttiah Muralitharan with relative comfort in the Test series, suddenly came across a different bowler in the one-day matches. They found Muralitharan a handful to tackle as they were reduced to totals of 143, 160 and 165 for nine, which hardly represented a challenge to the Sri Lankans.

Muralitharan finished the one-day series on a high note taking seven wickets at a cost of 9.85 runs per wicket, a contrast to the Test series in which he conceded 421 runs for 14 wickets at an average of 30.07.

Following the ease in which they beat England in the limited-overs game, Sri Lanka were left to rue how they lost the test series. ‘‘Personally, my gut feeling is that we didn’t do enough to beat England in the Tests,’’ Sri Lanka’s Australian coach Dav Whatmore said. ‘‘We had the ability and skill and if we had done a little bit more in the Test matches we could have won them,’’ he said.

The umpiring in the Test series was heavily criticised and affected both teams, with ICC match referee Hanumant Singh of India trying to control frayed tempers of players on the field.

He slapped fines and gave suspended match sentences to Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya and Muralitharan for showing dissent against decisions during the Test and one-day series.

A huge influx of England supporters also gave the visiting side more support at times than Sri Lanka received. ‘‘The lack of local support for the Test series had a lot to do with team morale. It had an adverse effect on the players,’’ Whatmore said.