Captain De Silva prevented Sri Lanka from collapsing: played an innings of 74 runs, fifty partnership with Ratnayake; the first session was in England’s name

The Sri Lankan team is making a comeback from a bad start on the first day of the first Test against England. The team has scored 178 runs for 8 wickets till the tea break on Wednesday. Debutant Milan Ratnayake is unbeaten on 32 and Vishwa Fernando is unbeaten on zero. The Sri Lankan team, batting first after winning the toss in Manchester, lost 5 wickets for 72 runs. The team’s score was 80/5 till lunch. In such a situation, captain Dhananjay de Silva prevented the team from falling apart by playing a half-century innings of 74 runs. He shared a 63-run partnership in 98 balls with Milan Ratnayake for the 8th wicket and took the score past 150. Captain de Silva completed the 15th fifty of his Test career. The first session was in the name of English pacers
The first session of the first day was in the name of England’s fast bowlers. The Sri Lankan team’s score was 80/5 till lunch. Here captain de Silva remained unbeaten on 28 runs. In this session, the performance of the top-5 batsmen of the Sri Lankan team was disappointing. Angelo Mathews could not even open his account. The openers together contributed only 6 runs. Kusal Mendis played an innings of 24 runs. Atkinson got the first success, Woakes got two wickets in the over
Gus Atkinson opened the account of wickets of the English team. He got Dimuth Karunaratne caught by wicketkeeper Jamie Smith in the sixth over of the Sri Lankan innings. Karunaratne was out after scoring 2 runs on 18 balls. In the next over, Chris Woakes got two batsmen out in the over. Chris Woakes got Madushanka caught by Root, while Mathews was LBW. Then Mark Wood took the wickets of Kusal Mendis and Shoaib Basir took the wickets of Chandimal. Top-5 batsmen could not cross the 25 mark
The top-5 batsmen from the Sri Lankan team could not score more than 25 runs. Opener Madushanka was out after scoring 4 runs and Karunaratne after scoring 2 runs. While Mendis added 24 runs. Angelo Mathews could not even open his account. Chandimal contributed 17 runs. Ratnayake is making his Test debut, Pope is captain in place of Stokes
Fast bowler Milan Ratnayake is making his Test debut. On the other hand, England is playing without Ben Stokes for the first time in the Big Bash League. He was injured during a domestic match this month. Ollie Pope is captaining the English team, while Dan Lawrence will open in place of Jack Crowley. Crowley’s finger was fractured.