Post by Taxigirl on Dec 2, 2003 9:37:01 GMT
1st Test, Galle, day one (rain stopped play):
Sri Lanka 83-1 v England
Bad weather has again meddled with England's tour of Sri Lanka as play in the first Test was stopped midway through afternoon session.
Sri Lanka reached 83-1 in Galle after winning the toss. The start of play had already been delayed by 30 minutes after heavy overnight showers.
Ashley Giles made the breakthrough just prior to the downfall, having Sanath Jayasuriya caught for 48.
Skipper Marvan Atapattu was unbeaten on 28, with Kumar Sangakkara four not out.
Two matches of the recent best-of-three one-day series were washed out in an England tour of Sri Lanka so far memorable only for atrocious weather conditions.
Paul Collingwood was handed a debut with Nasser Hussain suffering from flu.
The visitors bolstered their attack with two spinners, Ashley Giles and Gareth Batty keeping Robert Croft out of the XI.
Sri Lanka handed a debut to Dinusha Fernando, the paceman who made an impressive international bow in the only one-dayer played between the teams last month.
Sri Lanka's openers batted sensibly early on, when conditions offered some assistance to England's two frontline seamers Matthew Hoggard and Richard Johnson.
Both batsmen paid due respect to a number of good deliveries which bounced and moved away from the edge.
Although just 39 runs were scored in the first hour, Jayasuriya and Atapattu feasted on the bad balls.
They scored six boundaries, none better than Atapattu's lavish cut to the fence off Hoggard.
In the process, the two openers notched their 3,000th run together in Test matches.
England skipper Michael Vaughan brought Batty on just before lunch, the off-spinner a little unlucky to have a strong lbw shout to Jayasuriya turned down.
Batty continued his absorbing battle with the left-hander after the break, launching another resounding leg-before appeal and watching an inside edge cannon into the pads of keeper Chris Read.
Although scoring freely, Jayasuriya was not comfortable against the spinner and it could be said that Batty softened him up for Giles.
The left-arm spinner came on in the 30th over and struck in his second when Jayasuriya edged onto his pads and into the hands of Collingwood.
A deluge denied England the chance to supplement their breakthrough, and the bad news for both sides is that rain is forecast for the remainder of the match.
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Sri Lanka: ST Jayasuriya, MS Atapattu, DPMD Jayawardene, HP Tillakaratne (capt), KC Sangakkara, TT Samaraweera, HDPK Dharmasena, UDU Chandana, WPUJC Vaas, KADM Fernando, M Muralitharan.
England: MP Vaughan (capt), ME Trescothick, MA Butcher, PD Collingwood, GP Thorpe, A Flintoff, CMW Read, AF Giles, GJ Batty, MJ Hoggard, RL Johnson.