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England extended their extraordinary hex over Sri Lanka to a 14th game, with the tourists looking as out of their depth as the balls that were repeatedly deposited into the River Taff as their opponents cantered to their target of 146 to win by six wickets, with 47 balls remaining.
More than a dozen years have passed since Sri Lanka, crowned world champions in the format a month earlier, beat England by nine runs at the Oval. They have lost every meeting since and with this one also the series, and while much about this game contrasted with Tuesday’s first encounter in Southampton – starting with England winning the toss and choosing to chase – the outcome did not: another emphatic home win, sealed in the end in slapdash style: no-ball, wide, single, wide, single, muted celebration.
It was the six-hitting that most obviously illustrated the disparity in batting quality and power between the sides. Only two Sri Lankans managed to clear the boundary, and none more than once. Tom Banton doubled their collective tally on his own on his way to his fifth and fastest half-century in T20s; Harry Brook managed three sixes, and he faced only eight balls.
The evening had started promisingly for Sri Lanka, put in to bat with the ball racing at the slightest invitation across an outfield slick from a brief pre-match shower, but they soon went from scoring at pace to unravelling with similar rapidity. Lahiru Udara, bumped up a spot to open, got the evening off to a strong start alongside Pathum Nissanka, and after five overs they stood at 55 without loss. They scored 90 for nine off the remaining 15.
Liam Dawson initially derailed them. Udara, having scored 21 off 20, drove high to mid-on, where any fielder but the 6ft 5in Jamie Overton would have clawed at thin air but this one nonchalantly plucked it out of the sky. Kamil Mishara, bumped down a spot to No3, came in and miscued his first ball back to the bowler. Sri Lanka attempted to rebuild but instead they crumbled.
If Dawson’s introduction was productive, his final over was expensive. With five to go the tourists found themselves on 115 for five, whereupon Charith Asalanka, the captain, and Wanindu Hasaranga plundered 18 to spoil the spinner’s figures. That established a platform for a late-innings surge; they scored just 12 more, for the loss of four wickets, from their last four overs. Sonny Baker bowled two of those, his last a wicket maiden, to continue his fine form from the series opener in Southampton, and their total of 145 felt seriously underpowered.
For a while England tracked them closely: they too had scored 55 after five overs, though by then Nye Donald, now of Derbyshire but born in Swansea and originally of Glamorgan, had mishit successive Eshan Malinga deliveries into the sky, the first landing safe and the second not so much, caught by Hasaranga at mid-on. And like Sri Lanka they were two down in the sixth, Jos Buttler’s wild slash giving Mishara the chance to run 20 yards to his right from behind the stumps before taking the catch. Until that point Buttler had looked in fabulous touch, and if he will not have been satisfied with his contribution of 30 off 16, becoming the first man to pass 15,000 runs in T20 cricket might have helped him come to terms with it.
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After an epic unbeaten century at Southampton, Brook’s innings here was more of a cameo, but still thrilling for as long as it lasted. Three times in a single Hasaranga over he hit monstrous shots over midwicket off the back foot but he was punished for attempting a fourth, though it took a superb sprinting, diving catch by Malinga to do so. It was the first time Brook had been dismissed in this format since early July, four innings in which he had scored a mere 284. He is not quite invincible in this format but at home his team are coming close: beaten just once under his captaincy, and that in a rain-affected five-over shootout here last September. They have never gone unbeaten in a summer featuring more than two T20s; Saturday’s final fixture at Old Trafford will be their eighth of 2026, five of those against India’s world champions, and they don’t look like stumbling any time soon.
