forecast today is for a high temp of around 13C , i'm sure the sri lankans will feel right at home

They would need hundreds from Kusal Mendis, Chandimal and Mathews to reach 300, surprised if the rest of the tail could manage 50-70 runs all together.
Might even need a decent contribution from the nightwatchmen openers to see the new ball off for decent middle order.

i would happily take 100s from from mathews and chandimal as both are in my fantasy team

atherton doing a little analysis on woakes and that he has just taken 8 wickets in the 6 games

i know its a very small sample size so hard to really make a judgement but the one thing he has overlooked is all the games woakes has played have also been at grounds where seam should do ok, so makes his poor return of wickets even worse. its not like he has had to struggle away on dead pitches in the UAE or something. when you are getting picked on a bit of a horses for courses basis and still cant deliver then its a problem.

cook wins the toss and bats first

thought he might try to put the pressure on sri lanka straight away after the collapses last week but he reckons it looks a good pitch to bat on

this pitch looks really slow

hales just had a big edge to 3rd slip and it didn't carry even tho the slips appear to be quite shallow

Heads up for Lancs fans of a certain age

Graeme Fowler is the lunchtime interview on TMS

Agh! Cook will have to wait even longer for his 10K runs

cook out still 5 runs short of the 10,000 mark

want to bet if the situation arises that we can enforce the follow-on he will bat this time to get it over and done with

Foxy !

I used to like him on TMS

He used to do county games for Sky too

about the first really aggressive shot compton plays and he is caught on the boundary

cracking catch and he is probably a bit unlucky, thats going to ramp up the pressure on his spot tho

31 overs in the first session of a test match. That's a rarity

Compton is drinking in last chance saloon.

the sri lankans wouldn't want to stand still too long in the cold

even first session imo , 83-2 after winning the toss and chosing to bat is ok but not great

If he fails (or doesn't bat) in the 2nd innings ,Cook may get his chance of passing the 10,000 mark at Lords...

That would be fitting

Cheers

Excellent interview

another 50 for hales

maybe not quite cemented his place yet but well on the way if he keeps this up

I agree

Runs from James Vince may move him to 3 instead of Compton as well

What do we reckon ? Vince to 3, which is his best position for me, with Buttler in for Compton ? Unless of course he succeeds

i would be happy with that and take the gloves off bairstow so he can concentrate on batting alone

50 for root as well , good partnership this and been scored at a decent rate as well

I'm all for trying different things but I'm not sure our climate lends itself to this.

It takes too long to go from day to night !!

The 'twilight' period will be tricky

The summer of 2017 could see the first day-night Test staged in England, with Lord's and Edgbaston the most likely venues.

Both venues are keen, in theory, to explore the possibility of staging an August Test against West Indies under lights. The final decision whether and where a floodlit game is played will be made by the ECB.

"We have talked about it internally," Warwickshire chief executive, Neil Snowball, told ESPNcricinfo, "and we do think it is worth considering."

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/...y/1019913.html

the BiB would be my worry to

that twilight period can be quite long in the UK during the summer and during that period before the lights take full effect the light quality isn't great

hales doesn't convert another good start

still a solid innings from him, been quite impressed at the sort of patience and discipline he has shown, wasn't sure he had that in him