England v Sri Lanka – live! | Andy Bull

• Email Andy with all your thoughts andy.bull@guardian.co.uk • Press F5 to refresh this page or use our auto-refresher • Follow Andy on Twitter if that’s your thing 4th over: Sri Lanka 7-0 (Paranavitana 4, Thirimanne 2) There are a whole lot of thumb-twiddling pedants unleashing hell in my inbox. Turns out that thumb twiddling is one of the great British preoccupations, along with tea drinking and talking about the weather. Paranavitana knocks two past short leg and then sneaks an audacious single after dropping the ball down to the leg side, his partner squeezing home just ahead of the throw from the fielder. “When it comes to upsetting your in-laws, losing your ring is for beginners,” says Tim Travers. “A few years ago I attended an Easter family get together with my girlfriend at the times very religious parents, who were less than keen on me to put it mildly. The booze flowed freely and just as I seemed to be winning them over. Unfortunately for me some 7 year old relative decided to recount the story of Easter for me, and in my drunken wisdom I decided it’d be an excellent wheeze to correct him & inform him & his sister that Jesus was killed for murdering the Easter Bunny. Needless to say my good work was undone in a puddle of tears & I wasn’t invited back for Christmas.” 3rd over: Sri Lanka 4-0 (Paranavitana 1, Thirimanne 2) And Paranvitana pats his first run out to the off. I’ve just realised that, as Paul Swift says, I “dismissed Neil Withers apparently civil enquiry a bit too readily.” He meant that lunch will last 40 minutes didn’t he? Not that it would be taken in 40 minutes. So by rights I should reinstate his rant. Oh well. The moment has gone and besides, his email is now lost somewhere in the depths of the discarded in my inbox. 2nd over: Sri Lanka 3-0 (Paranavitana 0, Thirimanne 2) Broad gets to take the new ball at the other end, and predictably enough he decides that Don Thirimanne’s first ball in Test cricket should be a bouncer. The boy can duck though, and the ball shoots over his head to Prior. Another bouncer and Broad then flings down one wide of off stump and another wide of leg stump. Broad stops and paws at the pile of sawdust at the bowling crease, then whangs another delivery down the leg side. And the sixth ball is whipped away top square leg for two runs. Thirimanne has his first runs in Test cricket. It has been a poor first over from Broad. 1st over: Sri Lanka (Paranavitana 0, Thirimanne 0) “Here we go lads! Come on fellas!” shouts Matt Prior. James Anderson will bowl the first over of the day. His first ball is full and up on off-stump. Immediately we’re reminded what England were missing at Lord’s. There’s one delivery down the leg side, but otherwise they all whizz through past off-stump and on to Prior. “‘Where were you born and where do you live?’” says Charles Courtney. “I’m beginning to fear that the OBO has been an elaborate phishing scheme from the start. Don’t tell him your name Dunne.” Rod Bransgrove rings a silver bell, Jerusalem rings out over the PA system and the players walk out. We’re about to see a small piece of history be made at the Rose Bowl. “My friend^ Neil (a senior civil servant with plenty of time on his hands) has developed a process for denoting sarcasm in emails by suffixing the comment with ^ for sarcastic or -^ for not sarcastic,” writes Graham Page. “I think it would be a lovely gesture if you could recommend this to the obo readership-^” What would be the point? Is anything ever published on the OBO that isn’t sarcastic? It’s our default mode. Sincerity scares us. We’re English, after all. “Surely the third option as well as ‘Where were you born and where do you live’ is who does your Dad support?” points out Richard Moore. “I’m a Northants fan because of my Dad. I was lucky enough to be introduced to them by him in the year Anil Kumble played for them. I thought that I was due to support one of the top teams in the game. How foolish. Apparently my grandfather supported them and never got to see them win the County Championship, I don’t think I’m being too pessimistic to suggest that my father and I will have the same fate.” Hugh Maguire is one of many confused folk complaining that “Because your left and right hands are near mirror images of each other then a clock-wise right and an anti-clockwise left thumb rotation will be going in the same direction.” Now, I can’t agree with that. Surely as you look down on your thumbs from above you can figure out that moving one anti-clockwise and the other clockwise they will be going in opposite directions? Ryan, Ryan, Ryan . Where were you born and where do you live? Those are the only ways to pick your team. But for what it is worth all right-thinking people should support Somerset on the grounds that it is the land of sunshine, cider and sixes and that they have never won the Championship title. Someone help this fella Ryan Dunne out: “Test Cricket is all well and good but, over these long footballess months, I was thinking of picking a County Cricket side to start supporting. Anyone have any advice on how to go about this is? Is there a Glory Hunter’s favourite or, conversely, a St.Pauli style trendy neutral’s choice? My football team is the Glorious Glasgow Rangers, if that helps.” “Am I right in assuming lunch will be 40 minutes?” No, Neil Withers, you’re not. Lunch will be at 1.30pm, sadly rendering the rest of your 500 word rant about the tyranny of corporate lunches, prawn-sandwich eaters and the the evils of Rupert Murdoch entirely redundant. And unpublishable. How to lose a new wife and alienate your in-laws no2 in an ongoing series: “A friend of mine about a month after his wedding had to do a stock take/audit type thing at work,” says B. Deane. “Mindful he might lose his ring in the process, he takes it off, puts it safely in his pocket.Walking home gives all his loose change to Big Issue vendor. Gets on train. Gets home. Brain starts to work. Poor lad spent a few hours pointlessly searching for said vendor.” A wonderfully pointless stat from James Boon : “On the other hand, Strauss has scored more test hundreds than anyone else who hasn’t bowled a ball in Test cricket.” “I would have bowled as well” says Kumar, a wry grin spreading across his face. Thisara Perera comes in for Farveez Maharoof, and as we all suspected Hettige Don Rumesh Lahiru Thirimanne will make his debut at the top of the order as a replacement for Dilshan. Steve Finn drops out of the England team for Jimmy Anderson . It’s the toss Sanga calls heads, loses, and mouths ‘oh bugger’ to himself as Strauss announces that England will bowl . And now a word in a worthwhile cause from our captain, Mike Selvey: “Hi everyone. My daughter Hannah, who is 14, and four of her schoolfriends are undertaking the 3 Peaks Challenge at the end of June, in aid of SANDS, the charity for stillbirth, and neo-natal death. The task involves climbing the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales (ie Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, and Snowdon) within 24 hours. They are trying to raise £1500, and at the moment are getting on for halfway there. Anything you could do to help them further would be very gratefully received. You can donate through JustGiving with this link “. Three peaks in 24 hours? That’s a lot of hard yakka uphill into the wind. But I guess that kind of thing comes naturally to the Selvey family. Dig deep folks. Josh Robinson has a point here “Has Pietersen actually been in danger of being dropped?” – no, but only because the press and public don’t get to make the selection decisions – “I know he’s been out of form for a while, and various idiots have talked about his being dropped. But given that replacing an out-of-form KP with an in-form somebody else would make only a very small difference to the quality of the England side in comparison with the change that an in-form KP could bring about, there’s hardly any point in dropping him. And I imagine the selectors are perfectly aware of that.” Just like Shane Warne’s skin , the pitch has suddenly changed colour. The grass has come off the top, but Warne still reckons that whoever wins the toss should bowl first. Good news from the middle – play will start at 12.15pm and lunch will be taken at 1.30pm. Play can stretch on till 7pm tonight. “I these days find myself idly fiddling with my recently acquired wedding ring,” Luke Richardson, that’s a dangerous habit to get in to. They feel very uncomfortable at first, don’t they? Assuming that you, like me, aren’t used to wearing rings. “Today’s tally of accidental drops, heart stopping rolls away across the office floor and incidents of it being stuck on the wrong finger is at 6 (only 1 heart stopping roll away). Still, at least I didn’t leave it at home today.” Just don’t make the mistake a friend of mine did. A few days after the wedding his wife asked him how the ring felt and he couldn’t quite find the right word so he came out with “claustrophobic” . “Jonathan Trott hasn’t been out of form has he?” Yes he has Lori McConnachie. There was some hubbub about his having to play for his place in Bangladesh last Spring, after a poor tour to South Africa. He responded with one of the most intolerably unwatchable innings in the modern history of cricket, 64 in four-and-a-half hours in the second Test at Dhaka. An expert writes: “Following Thomas Whiteley’s comment about losing time to rain during drought, I thought I’d try and claim a penny for my thoughts. It’s quite possible for extreme weather to occur (i.e. periods of rain) during a prolonged dry spell. Also, from a sample size of three, one of which was a match in Wales, it’s hard to see these inclement conditions as anything other than a bit of random variation.” Iain in Edinburgh is now going back to his Ecological stats PhD. “I can’t work out if you’re very simple or a genius,” says Phil Powell. To which I can only reply, if you’ve got to ask you’ll never know. “Simple because thumb twiddling is actually very easy, or a genius because you’ve just caused literally tens of people across the world sit in front of their computer and simultaneously thumb twiddle.” On Sky Athers, Nasser and Goldenhair are talking about Strauss’ batting technique. To be fair to them, they’re not being too hysterical about it. But it is slightly bizarre that the English media always feel compelled to pick on one batsman. Last week it was Pietersen, this week it was Strauss. Is there a single member of the top six who hasn’t supposedly been out of form and in danger of losing his place at some point in the last 12 months? “Why are you rotating one thumb in the opposite direction to the other, instead of just getting them to follow each other round in the same direction?” asks Tim Bradshaw,”It’s this kind of over complication that has cost Arsenal so dear over the last few years.” I’ll forgive you using a football analogy on the OBO, Tim, but you’ve entirely missed my point. Twiddling your thumbs is not supposed to be easy, if it was there wouldn’t be any point doing it. “With the recent announcement that we now have the opening pair of A. Strauss, OBE and A. Cook, MBE for England,” writes Colyn Alcock, “is the the most honoured opening partnership in the history of the team?” Eitherway, when it comes to syllables they’ve got nothing on their opposite numbers in the Sri Lankan side: Hettige Don Rumesh Lahiru Thirimanne is going to come in for his Test debut today, alongside Nishad Tharanga Paranavitana. Incidentally have you ever actually tried properly twiddling your thumbs? It is surprisingly difficult to do. Thread your fingers together in front of you – think of the kind of stance that Tony Blair used to adopt when he was at a lectern – then put your thumbs behind them, side by side. Now move your right thumb in a circle clockwise, and at the same time move your left thumb in a circle anti-clockwise. Let me know how you get on. “I’m with Dave Adams,” writes Ellie Hibberd. “My husband and I are taking his granddad to the match on Saturday for his first Test match in years. I equally do not want to have to spend the day trying to convince an 85 year old man that it is a good idea to sit there all day shivering in the drizzle waiting for the cricket to start – and I’m not sure he’s going to be up for the ‘let’s just drink lots of beer instead’ option. Dave will obviously have that problem with his seven year old too.” More of a whisky drinker is he? I do hope we get some play today , because the conditions look absolutely horrendous for batting. The pitch is green, the atmosphere is thick and the ground is wet. Whoever wins the toss surely has to bowl first. “There were dire stories about drought not that long ago,” grumbles Thomas Whiteley. “And yet we have lost a lot of time to rain during all three matches in different parts of the country, so what happened?” Yes, it is odd isn’t it? But much as I love indulging in a little pseudo-science I’m not going to attempt to give you an answer myself. Let’s trust that somewhere out there among the OBO readership there is someone who can give us a proper answer. They’ve just pulled the covers off the pitch and it looks as green as a landlubber’s gills after a rough night on the ocean. But beyond the brief window of dry weather that we’re about to enter the forecast is, as Dave Adams says, not very good: “Not happy with the weather situation, to say the least – looks pretty ominous until Sunday, though 15 miles down the road in Portsmouth the rain has stopped and there’s the tiniest hint of sunshine (which has little bearing on the rose bowl, because the weather is moving west to east). I have tickets for Saturday – taking my seven year-old to his first ever cricket match. I really don’t want to spend the day explaining to my son that a) I don’t control the weather, b) No, we can’t go home early, or c) that the alternative to getting wet at the Rose Bowl while not watching cricket was to spend the day shopping with his mum.” A glimmer of good news: there will be an inspection at 11.15am. Shane Warne is on Sky for the first time this summer , looking truly preposterous. Warne insists that he hasn’t had a facelift, insisting that “New Estée Lauder moisturisers for my skin have made a big difference.” I don’t believe a word of it. And not just because Estée Lauder happens to have a long-running association with Warne’s new squeeze Liz Hurley. The man looks like Ming the Merciless after a session on a sunbed. His eyebrows arch upwards at a ludicrously unlikely angle and his skin is stretched tight across his skull. So in the meantime it’s you, me and a whole lot of time to kill. Let the thumb twiddling commence. Morning everyone . Guess what? It’s raining at the Rose Bowl. The turf is turgid, with water oozing up through the grass around the covers. The pitch still needs a cut and a roll. And so even when the rain stops it is going to be 90 minutes or so before play can start. Which makes Mike Selvey’s match preview look all the more prescient : “If previous encounters are to be judged, Rod Bransgrove is more atuned to rock’n’roll than the musical, so he may not be familiar with Barbra Streisand and Funny Girl. But, as they put the finishing touches to the Rose Bowl, the ground into which he has poured heart, soul and money, probably in that order, he would be forgiven for singing quietly to himself the words of Fanny Brice in the famous show stopper: “Don’t bring around the cloud to rain on my parade.” The dream is coming true for him and Hampshire. A ground that barely existed at the start of the century, carved out of farmland, is now hosting its inaugural Test match. There is a pleasant intimacy to the venue and it deserves supporting. Full, with the sun out, it will provide a fine stage. But this afternoon the cloud descended and a steady drizzle started, an ominous portent to what is to come over the next few days. Already this does not promise to be a game without interruption. Keep singing, Rod.” Sri Lanka in England 2011 England cricket team Sri Lanka cricket team Cricket Over by over reports Andy Bull guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.