Two of England’s most important players hit top form to secure victory over Sri Lanka<\/p>\n
Harry Brook has smashed a blistering 136 and Joe Root made another flawless century as England beat Sri Lanka by 53 runs to clinch a much-needed ODI series victory.<\/p>\n
The Yorkshiremen combined for a 191-run partnership in Colombo to lift England to a mammoth 3-357, the highest total on this ground since 2018.<\/p>\n
Root steered the innings with an unbeaten 111, laying the platform for skipper Brook to issue a stunning reminder of his firepower as he blasted Sri Lanka to all parts of the ground in an ODI-best 136 not out from just 66 balls.<\/p>\n
On a ground where scores above 300 are rare, it was a total always likely to be beyond the hosts and so it proved despite a wonderful maiden international century from Pavan Rathnayake.<\/p>\n
For England it was just a second ODI series win in their last eight and provided a morale boost after the 4-1 Ashes drubbing as well as aiding their ODI ranking, with automatic qualification for the 2027 World Cup far from certain.<\/p>\n
An impressive 2-1 win, against a side who had won seven consecutive 50-over series on home soil, will also come as a relief to under-fire head coach Brendon McCullum.<\/p>\n
Brook began this tour admitting he was lucky to still be captain after an altercation with a nightclub bouncer in New Zealand on their last white-ball engagement.<\/p>\n
In the circumstances his celebration, mimicking WWE fighter “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s “beer smash”, raised eyebrows.<\/p>\n
“It was just more about celebrating tonight with the boys,” Brook explained. “Like I said the other day in my press conference, I’ve got to try and gain that trust back with the lads and the way I wanted to do that was perform, play well and lead from the front.”<\/p>\n
Root said there was “no malice” behind the gesture and he “hoped it would be received the right way”.<\/p>\n
“He’s trying to show he wants that approval from the group, through humour,” said Root.<\/p>\n
“That’s another area of why he’s going to be a great leader, because he has that side to him as well.<\/p>\n
“He’s showed his calmness and his clarity under pressure, and he’s also showed humour as well in doing that.”<\/p>\n
Brook went from 50 to 136 in 26 balls after Root backed up scores of 61 and 75 in the first two matches with a 20th ODI century.<\/p>\n
Jacob Bethell played his part with a well-made 65.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka began their daunting chase on the charge and were 2-94 off nine overs but then Pahum Nissanka went for 50 off 25 balls and they fell away.<\/p>\n
Rathnayake’s 121 kept Sri Lankan hopes alive but he was the last to fall as they were bowled out with 3.2 overs to spare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two of England’s most important players hit top form to secure victory over Sri Lanka Harry Brook has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-442378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}