The Sri Lankan team managed to make a comeback from a bad start on the first day of the first Test against England. The team scored a respectable score of 236 runs in the first innings. At one point, the Sri Lankan team had lost 6 wickets under 100. In such a situation, captain Dhananjay de Silva and debutant Milan Ratnayake scored half-centuries.
By the end of Wednesday’s play, England have scored 22 runs without loss. Captain Ollie Pope and Ben Duckett remained unbeaten. After winning the toss in Manchester, they decided to bat first, but England’s fast bowlers proved Sri Lankan captain Dhananjay de Silva’s decision wrong when the visiting team lost 3 wickets for 6 runs.
The team’s score was 80/5 till lunch. After the dismissal of captain de Silva before tea, Ratnayake scored 72 runs and helped the team cross the 200 mark. England’s Chris Woakes and Shoaib Basir got 3-3 wickets each.
Captain took charge of the innings, 15th half century
Captain Dhananjay de Silva took charge of the innings after losing early wickets. He prevented the team from falling apart by playing a half century innings of 74 runs. De Silva made small but important partnerships in the middle order. He shared a 63 run partnership in 98 balls with Milan Ratnayake for the 8th wicket and took the score past 150.
The first session of the first day was in the name of English pacers
. The score of the Sri Lankan team was 80/5 till lunch. Here captain De Silva remained unbeaten on 28 runs.
In this session, the performance of the top-5 batsmen of the Sri Lankan team was disappointing. Angelo Mathews could not even open his account. The openers together contributed only 6 runs. Kusal Mendis played an innings of 24 runs.