A Day of Great Pairings

After writing the near-obituary of England's One-Day side after their disastrous whitewashing at the hands of Sri Lanka two things have now gave me a bit more hope for them. Both happened today, and both involve a pair of individuals dominating a match.

For England, the pair is Monty Panesar and Steve Harmison. Thanks to a special price offer from ECB TV I was able to watch live on the net as these two bowlers acted as hammer and anvil to destroy a strong Pakistani batting side put under pressure by great centuries from Cook and Bell. Monty has suffered a lot of comments about his fielding and batting, but against the meat of Pakistan's order he was a star today, taking all the toughest wickets with some unpredictable turning of the ball. He's a natural player to like because he seems genuinely grateful and surprised by the rewards he's getting from a huge amount of intense preparation and adjustment.

Until the tailenders came out, I thought Monty was the big star of the match. But then I saw that the tailenders were generally frightened of Harmison. Kaneria refused singles in order to avoid taking strike against him, and I think it was Sami who was so jittery that he tried to duck a ball that turned out to be of a good length. When the ball hit him around the shoulder, I think, England actually gave an LBW shout!

Between the two of them, they took 19 wickets, as Jim Laker did by himself 50 years ago on the same pitch. The one they didn't get was a runout.

The other big news is the huge (624 run!) partnership between Jayawardene and Sangakkara vs. South Africa. Those guys brutalized England's wounded bowling attack, making it look quite vulnerable (especially in the ODI's), but apparently they're just two great batsmen on fire this summer. Have a look at the amazing scorecard. Perhaps a drawn test series and receiving a 5-0 ODI thrashing were not so bad, after all. Sajid Mahmoud looked pretty bad against Sri Lanka, but he was not in Nicky Boje's league (65 overs, 221 runs, 0 wickets - not that the other S.A. bowlers looked much better).

This batting record follows an ODI in this summer in which Sri Lanka (led by 157 from Jayasuriya, this time) scored a record 443 runs vs the Netherlands. Clearly these guys can hit the ball. The conventional wisdom about Sri Lanka cricket going into this summer was that they were a team in decline - aging like Australia but not creating any new stars. Now they look like one of the favorites for the World Cup next Spring.