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Being as it comprises three whole Tests, it’s probably inaccurate to describe this England v Sri Lanka series as ‘short’. After all, this is an era when two Tests inside a fortnight supposedly qualifies as a ‘series’. But while there’s technically a first, second and third Test between these two nations, is the series really three Tests long?
We touched on this earlier in the summer after the West Indies were double-skittled in the first Test of their series.
At the time, we implied that match had essentially functioned as a warm-up, the Windies having only had a three-day game against a County Select XI prior to it. They did indeed seem a bit warmer in the second Test, but when they lost that one as well, the series had gone before it had really begun.
This seems to us to be the recurring logisitical paradox of the modern Test tour:
- The shorter the series, the more important it is to start well
- The shorter the series, the less warm-up cricket there will be
This is not doing anyone any favours – not the tourists, not the home team, and certainly not anyone who wants to follow a decent Test series between them.
Another example was the West Indies’ tour of Australia at the start of the year. On that occasion they had a three-day game against a Cricket Australia XI, got bowled out for 188 and 120 in the first Test, and then came back and won the second Test.
All the resultant lamentations that there wasn’t a third Test rather overlooked the fact there hadn’t really been a first one either. Not really.
And so to Sri Lanka, who entered today’s first Test after one game against England Lions. Luxury of luxuries, that was a four-day game, which meant today wasn’t their first time playing first-class cricket in England since 2016.
It nearly was though. And early on it certainly looked like it was as they slipped to 6-3 and then 40-4.
The usual disclaimers apply of course – don’t judge a pitch until both sides have batted on it and all that – but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that in another world the first morning could have been less awful.
The cliché is that touring teams always want to hit the ground running. The issue is that more often than not, they hit it running backwards. Hitting the ground at a dead standstill would be a more reasonable aspiration.
A counter-argument to all of the above would be a tour like England’s to India in January, where they had zero warm-up games and instead spent 11 days training 1,600 miles away in Abu Dhabi. England won the first Test and lost the other four.
England’s players do however spend a lot of time in India and quite often it’s for Test cricket. However they shaped their immediate preparation on that occasion, there was a certain volume of experience to build on.
There’s no exact recipe for success when it comes to warming up for a Test tour, but being in the country sometimes and playing some cricket there would seem to us to be useful ingredients.
