That the target was achieved with approximately half the allotted overs left should tell a story in itself. However, it’s hard to overtly criticize England’s bowlers, given that they barely had any runs to play with. Another batting disaster earlier in the afternoon is what proved critical to England’s fortunes. It’s one thing to know the generic conditions of a venue and quite another to adapt when the tracks at that particular place behave differently. Today’s Chinnaswamy surface wasn’t the usual slam-bang-wallop kind of track where power-hitters usually make merry. The deck was on the slower side and the odd ball did stop a bit too.

England were too late to realise this fact and by then, they had just the tail left. From the get-go, indications were clear that the reigning champions would go hard in their bid to post a big score. Australia in their previous game and South Africa frequently had done this in the tournament. Given England’s explosive brand of cricket, it was a surprise that they hadn’t produced even a single performance of such menace. The batting unit wanted today to be that day where their turnaround started and blindly trusted the Chinnaswamy surface to be their ally. Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t that kind of a track.

The first five overs of the England innings was the only time in the entire game where they seemed to have some confidence. Dawid Malan stroked a few boundaries upfront, as did Jonny Bairstow but once comeback man Angelo Mathews and Maheesh Theekshana were introduced, the tables turned. The veteran started the fightback with the key breakthrough of Malan and then was influential in the run out of Joe Root as England started to stutter. Theekshana continued to keep it tight while the pace duo of Lahiru Kumara and Kasun Rajitha then sliced through the rest of the English batting line-up. Ben Stokes was the only one to show some resistance but even he lacked his usual tempo. It was the sort of batting implosion that leaves teams with no way back.

Brief scores:
England 156 in 33.2 overs (Jonny Bairstow 30, Dawid Malan 28, Ben Stokes 43; Kasun Rajitha 2-36,  Lahiru Kumara 3-35, Angelo Mathews 2-14) lost to  Sri Lanka 160/2 in 25.4 overs (Pathum Nissanka 77*, Sadeera Samarawickrama 65*) by eight wickets