We showed our true character – Mathews

It took Angelo Mathews’ team five weeks to display the character they are renowned for when Sri Lanka’s batsmen finally came into their own to pile up an impressive score of 475 on the fourth day of the second Test against an England attack that had overpowered them with their seam and swing.

Sri Lanka had gone through a horrendous run in the ongoing Test series being bowled out for totals less than 120 in their first three innings. But after being asked to follow-on for the second successive time in the series and facing the prospect of another innings thrashing, the Lankan batsmen put their heads down to make everyone sit up and take notice of them by producing a noteworthy display in the second innings at Durham.

Although the batting revival came a shade too late for Mathews’ men to save the series it has somewhat brought back the confidence that was missing in the dressing room and on the field. Despite Sri Lanka’s tremendous fightback England won the second Test by nine wickets to take a winning 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

“Especially in the first innings, not scoring more than 100 was very disappointing. We talked about bringing back the fight – the Sri Lankan fight that we’ve not had in the last couple of weeks,” said Mathews.

“The boys showed a lot of resilience after the last five weeks, to come back and score 475 runs was very pleasing. The way (Dinesh) Chandimal batted and also Kaushal Silva and Rangana Herath – they batted well and fought really hard. The English bowlers bowled really well.”

Reflecting on what inspired them to come out of their shell Mathews said, ““We’ve talked about everything possible to get everything back. It’s just the character we talked about. We talked about our character and the fight. We’ve been talking a lot about it, but unfortunately we didn’t show it on the field.

“I thought we started showing it in the second innings while we were batting. We had a brilliant first day. We caught all our catches. But unfortunately we started off day two by letting Moeen (Ali) and Chris Woakes off the hook. Then we had a really bad day towards the end of the second day – almost getting bowled out. We had to fight really hard. All the batters worked really hard in the nets every single day before the start. We worked hard with the coaches and that was pleasing.”

Mathews said the way Herath batted the other batsmen could take a leaf out of his notebook.

“Rangana’s become a proper no. 8 for us over the past one-and-a-half years,” said Mathews.

He’s been scoring and hanging in there. If I recall a couple of years ago at Headingley he batted with me and got 49. He’s been giving his best with the bat and ball for us over the last couple of years. Every day he’s been trying to get better. Hopefully he can continue that.”

Mathews said that he was disappointed with the batting in the first innings because the wicket was much better than they got at Headingley.

“That’s why I was very disappointed. It wasn’t a 100-run wicket. There was much less grass than Headingley. It was not spinning much. It had a little bit of lateral movement, but there were no demons in the wicket. We could have got at least 250 on that wicket to give ourselves a chance in this game.”

Following Sri Lanka’s magnificent fight back England captain and coach both expressed the same views and said that Sri Lanka cannot be taken for granted.

“It’s hard for the Sri Lankan batters in one sense, but they are very good players, and most of the time on flat wickets you have to work very hard against them,” said England captain Alastair Cook.

“Credit to Sri Lanka, the way they batted in the second innings, and it shows how hard you have to work for Test match wins. It was only two years ago that they beat us at Headingley, so we shouldn’t take anything for granted.”

England coach Trevor Bayliss said: “Any time you can win two Tests in a row and win a series, wrapping it up after two matches, is a fantastic effort. The wicket flattened out and the Sri Lankans showed some of the fight that they’re quite capable of. They’ve got some very good players in their team. Yes, they’ve got some young players but we certainly can’t take it for granted in the third match.”