Encouragingly for England on the eve of a subcontinental T20 World Cup, their spin department is holding up well.<\/p>\n
A combined 12 overs yielded three wickets for 81 runs at an economy rate of 6.75, a return that underlined their growing control and reliability. <\/p>\n
Rashid remains the ace in the pack, capable of stifling momentum and producing breakthroughs at key moments. <\/p>\n
The experienced leg-spinner’s googly may have been well studied by opposition batters, but it remains a potent weapon, as Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka discovered when he was trapped lbw slogging to leg.<\/p>\n
Dawson’s left-arm spin provided much-needed control through the middle overs, slowing down his speeds to left vs right handers, while Jacks continues to mature as a bowling option, and used his angles well.<\/p>\n
Brook has plenty of options to turn to even when the pitch does not spin big.<\/p>\n
A slight concern for England, with just under a week to go before a major tournament, was that their seam bowling did not quite hit the mark. <\/p>\n
That caveat comes with the acknowledgement that the surface at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium was a used one, offering little margin for error. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless Jamie Overton struggled with his length, while Curran, fresh from an expensive hat-trick in the opening T20, surprisingly lacked conviction after conceding 14 from his first over.<\/p>\n
Archer fared slightly better, picking up two wickets despite being targeted early on, with Nissanka launching him out of the ground in his opening over. <\/p>\n
Archer, however, recovered well to bowl effectively at the death as Sri Lanka pushed for a total in excess of 200.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Encouragingly for England on the eve of a subcontinental T20 World Cup, their spin department is holding up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-402900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}