Oval defeat a wake-up call for England as Sri Lanka highlight why they deserve to play more Tests

There’ll be no summer clean sweep then, I’ll tell the children. England’s unbeaten Test run has come to the most ignominious of ends at The Oval, comprehensively outplayed by Sri Lanka in an eight-wicket loss.

It was fitting that Pathum Nissanka was the man to hit the winning runs, his superb unbeaten 127, made at better than a run a ball, meant Sri Lanka never really looked in any danger of not chasing down the 219 they needed for victory. Combined with 64 off 51 balls in the first innings, he was unsurprisingly named Player of the Match, quite the Test for a man not even in Sri Lanka’s team for the first match of the series.

For England this defeat should serve as a real wake up call, they played poorly here and their sloppiness was punished. Whether through arrogance, a lack of concentration or an inability to adapt to circumstances they were at times fairly shambolic in this Test and thoroughly deserved to be beaten by a Sri Lankan side that finally put together the glimpses of quality they have shown at earlier points in the series.

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While Sri Lanka waltzed to victory before lunch on Day Four, in reality the game was won on Day Three, England bowled out for 156 in just 34 overs – with almost half of those runs coming from the bat of Jamie Smith.

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Batting in their second innings England seemed determined to simply give their wickets away, Sri Lanka were bowling better than they had first time around, but they were aided enormously by a cavalcade of poor shots from a batting lineup that crumbled embarrassingly.

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Perhaps the most galling aspect to it all is that it was essentially a repeat performance of how they had ended their first innings, when from a position of 261/3 they chucked wicket after wicket away to be bowled out for 325, including losing their final six wickets for 35 runs. To hand some of the advantage back to your opponents with one sloppy batting performance is unfortunate, to immediately do the same thing again at the very next opportunity is unforgivable.

It was telling that without any real contribution from Joe Root with the bat in this Test – the last time he failed to make at least a half-century in either innings was eight Tests ago – England were perilously fragile. His remarkable consistency has bailed England out of so many holes over recent years, here finally were the consequences when for once he could not pull off another rescue mission.

In what was essentially a failure of the collective it seems a little churlish to single out any individual, but perhaps the biggest disappointment in this match was Harry Brook – if only because over the course of his extraordinary start to his Test match career he has shown such quality that to be gifting his wicket away with careless slogging seemed particularly unnecessary.

Every player of course is entitled to an off game, but it was the sense that he wasn’t really giving himself a chance to just stay in and pile on the runs, as he has repeatedly shown he is capable of doing, that disappointed the most. It is something he will need to get back to if England’s Ashes dreams down under are to come to fruition.

For Sri Lanka though this was a fine Test win, their fourth of all time on English soil. Not only did it showcase the cricketing talent that they possess as a nation but also just why they should be playing more regular Test cricket – once again the ICC’s failure to properly manage the game they oversee rears its head.