The summer has been a roller coaster so far with England beating Sri Lanka soundly in “english seamer friendly” conditions 2-0 with the third test at Lords drawn when rain washed out most of the last day’s play with the visitors still 283 runs short and England 9 wickets shy of victory.
In the five match one day series England prevailed 3-0 with one game abandoned and the first game finishing tied of the last ball when Liam Plunkett smashed a straight six to level scores leaving Chris Woakes unbeaten on 95 and sending the Trent Bridge crowd into raptures.
The sole T20 game was also won by England with 15 balls to spare when chasing the 140 target set.
To be fair to the Sri Lankan’s they had a very inexperienced batting line up having lost the services of two world class batsmen in MahelaJaywardene and Kumar Sangakkara but of the youngsters who toured look out for KusalMendis, who scored consistently over here but not heavily. Mendis then went home and scored his maiden test century a few weeks ago against Australia which was a mighty 176 out of the team score of 353 setting up a 3-0 series win against the Baggy Greens which also featured a hat trick by left arm spinner RanganaHerath.
Pakistan are currently on tour here and after the four match test series ended 2 a piece we move onto the limited over matches over the next few weeks.
The tests were either convincing victories for one side or the other with the tourists winning in London twice whilst England won in Birmingham and Manchester.
Pakistan’s skipper MizbahulHaq became the oldest player to score a century on debut at The Home of Cricket, quite an achievement for a 42 year old. His celebrations were fabulous to watch as he performed press ups in from the pavilion which was greeted by thunderous applause by the watching 25,000 crowd. In the same game leg spinner Yasir Shah and English seamer Chris Woakestook ten wickets apiece in the match which is very rare.
Woakes was voted as Man of The Series with his haul of 26 wickets and consistent batting in England’s lower order.
Double centuries were made by Joe Root and Younis Khan whilst Jonny Bairstow, Alistair Cook, Azhar Ali and the returning Mohammad Amir all impressed.
Elsewhere India beat the West Indies 2-0 in their three match series with run machine and Indian captain Virat Kohli scoring a double century in the first game.
New Zealand won both tests in Bangladesh and now travel the South Africa which should be a great set of matches.
The picture below shows Kusal Mendis when he played club cricket in England two years ago.
