Half an hour into the opening morning of this First Test and the outlook was, even beyond Manchester’s promise of habitual drizzle, notably bleak.
Old Trafford’s party stand, only half the size it had been for the Ashes Test here 12 months ago, was half empty. There were blankets out on the hotel balconies and the skies were grey. Above all else, a Sri Lanka side whose batting was supposedly its best shot at making a contest of this series, had been reduced to six for three.
Thank heavens, then, for Dhananjaya de Silva and Milan Rathnayake, who between them lifted the tourists from the doldrums to a respectable 236 all-out.
De Silva, having won the toss, was the sole specialist to make a meaty contribution and for much of his 74 stood as the only thing between opposite number Ollie Pope and a straightforward first day in Ben Stokes’s shoes. Eventually, though, he found unlikely support from No9 Rathnayake, who chose the occasion of his Test debut to add 72, his highest ever professional score.
Pope was persistent, pressing on with his spinners when bad afternoon light barred seam, while Chris Woakes and Shoaib Bashir finished with three wickets apiece, but England met familiar frustration against the tail as Sri Lanka added 123 runs added for the final three wickets to fall.
The start of this match marked the resumption of a Test summer always billed as at best lowkey, and at worst one liable to expose the growing chasm between the format’s haves and have-nots.
The first half of it had been won by England in almost grimly resounding fashion, a 3-0 sweep against a willing West Indies side whose rawness, with bat in hand in particular, had been ruthlessly exploited.
Sri Lanka, by contrast, arrived a more seasoned bunch, with six players averaging at least 40 in Test cricket and comfortably more centuries combined than an England XI missing Stokes and Zak Crawley to injury.
Optimism, though, that the visitors would offer sterner resistance was soon on the wane, through a dismal period of ten scoreless balls in which three of the top four came and went.
Dimuth Karunaratne was first of them, edging Atkinson behind on the pull to give England their breakthrough, before Nishan Madushka and Angelo Mathews followed in Woakes’s double-wicket maiden, the latter leg-before leaving the ball.
Kusal Mendis briefly countered, before being pinged on the glove and caught at slip off Mark Wood, whose first ball loosener at the top of his spell had clocked 94.8mph on the gun. The wicket-taking delivery was a click or two gentler, but brutal in length and bounce; Dinesh Chandimal had the exact opposite problem with his dismissal, pinned on the ankle by a Bashir grubber that barely left the ground.
So, Sri Lanka five-down at lunch and for Pope, the day’s most awkward act still having come in donning a blazer at the toss and trying to avoid Surrey teammate Atkinson’s mischievous gaze. “I know he was thinking of some comment,” Pope explained. “Maybe Will from The Inbetweeners or something.”
The 26-year-old had insisted he had licence to go with his gut on the field, but promised not to stray far from the Stokesian way and that was evident in the early afternoon as England persisted with a familiar short-ball ploy.
Atkinson was its best exponent, dismissing Prabath Jayasuriya twice in three balls, first off a no-ball bouncer and then off a fuller, legal delivery fended weakly by a scrambled mind.
De Silva, though, was calm, cruising past fifty in 56 balls and then taking Bashir on with successive fours. He was granted one life, on 65, when a tricky stumping chance passed Jamie Smith by, a rare blip from the young ‘keeper since taking the gloves three Tests ago. The miss was not unduly costly, though, De Silva turning Bashir tamely into the hands of Dan Lawrence after adding only nine more.
Rathnayake continued to play his shots, looking increasingly comfortable on his way to a maiden half-century and no doubt feeling even more so once the post-tea gloom had ruled Wood’s pace out of the attack.
He launched Joe Root’s spin for the series’s first six but eventually succumbed when caught trying to hit Bashir down the ground, before Pope’s run-out of Vishwa Fernando drew the innings to a close.
There was time - and light - still for England to start their reply against spin, a different challenge to that which makeshift opener Lawrence might have pictured last night, but perhaps one preferable to facing the seaming new ball under lights.
In four overs, he and Ben Duckett looked broadly assured, save one run-out close shave, and with 22 runs coming quickly, De Silva effectively called it a day by nominally asking to turn to seam.
