England clinch ODI series against Sri Lanka on DLS after another rain-hit match
Captain Eoin Morgan was 31 not out from 34 balls when play was curtailed – more than enough to keep England ahead of the calculations
EOIN MORGAN continued his superb form and made sure England completed yet another 50-over series triumph.
Well, 50 overs might be stretching things because each of the four matches against Sri Lanka has been affected by rain.
It was the same in the game on Saturday when only 27 overs of England’s reply were possible before another deluge swept across the ground.
Captain Morgan was 31 not out from 34 balls when play was curtailed – more than enough to keep England ahead of the calculations. Their winning margin was 18 runs under the DLS method.
Morgan’s scores so far in Sri Lanka have been 91 not out, 14 not out, 92, 58 not out and now 31 not out.
He started piling on the runs just a few days before suggesting in a TV interview that he would drop himself for next year’s World Cup if it strengthened the team.
That looks a faintly ridiculous prospect now.
England’s win gave them a 3-0 lead with one match to play in Colombo on Tuesday.
If you exclude the one-off defeat against Scotland in May, Morgan’s team have now won nine bi-lateral 50-over series on the trot. They are truly the best in the world, as the official rankings testify.
When Sri Lanka posted 273-7 on a pitch offering decent turn, England looked like facing a tricky chase. But they won comfortably enough.
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Jason Roy made 45 and Joe Root 32 not out. Root was lucky on 23 when he chipped a full toss straight to short fine leg, only for the square leg umpire to signal no-ball because Sri Lanka had four fielders inside the circle, rather than five.
The only batting failure was opener Alex Hales, who was stumped for 12.
Hales received a chance because Jonny Bairstow was ruled out with an ankle injury sustained while playing football on Friday. He wasn’t tackled – but somehow contrived to trip over the ball.
Bairstow’s right ankle was encased in a surgical boot and he unlikely to play in the final ODI or next Saturday’s lone T20 match. His aim is to be 100 per cent fit for the three-Test series.
Sri Lanka’s innings threatened to fold when they lost opener Niroshan Dickwella and No.4 Kusal Mendis in the space of three balls. From the delivery in between, Jos Buttler bungled a chance to stump Dhananjaya de Silva.
Adil Rashid bowled his ten overs for just 36 runs and he should have had a second wicket but Hales mis-judged a chance on the boundary offered by Dasun Shanka and the ball landed for six.