fitness of Matthew Hoggard

Matthew Hoggard is not yet certain to be fit for England in the final Test against Sri Lanka starting in Galle on Tuesday after his back injury. Peter Moores, the head coach, spoke with some caution yesterday before England¡¯s journey south and a training session on the ground this morning.

¡°Matthew has bowled two spells pretty well flat out so we will see the reaction he gets to it,¡± Moores said. ¡°He had a little niggle after a couple of balls, which shows that it is not quite there, but we are still four days off a Test match. He will bowl a couple of spells over this weekend and we will see how it goes. We can only play him if there is no risk that anything will happen because the conditions out here mean that if you did lose a bowler, it would become very difficult to get 20 wickets.¡±

Moores stated the obvious when he said that the key to winning the third Test and levelling the series would be to make a seriously large first-innings score. Other than Muttiah Muralitharan, the biggest difference between the teams has been the two long innings played by Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena, 152 and 195 respectively. Sangakkara batted for 397 minutes in the second innings in Kandy; Jayawardena for 578 in Colombo. By contrast England have managed ten scores of more than 50 so far but no centuries and Ian Bell alone has batted for five hours. Had it been six at Kandy, the game would have been saved and England would still have a chance of winning the series.

At least, however, they are gradually making Muralitharan work harder and longer for his wickets, even if part of the reason is simply that batting at the SSC was even easier than on the slightly livelier surface for the first Test. Muralitharan took nine for 140 from 71 overs in Kandy but a relatively modest six for 173 in 74.2 overs in the second Test.

¡°I don¡¯t know if Sri Lanka are losing momentum but we are gaining it because we are playing Murali better all the time and we also played their seamers well,¡± Moores said. ¡°Our batsmen are getting settled and ready to produce that score we will need to win the Test match.¡±

Not helped by the element of misfortune in the dismissals of Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook, England failed to make the important big first-innings score at the SSC. Moores had every right to be pleased, however, by the way that his bowlers ¡°stuck together as a unit¡±, including the tyro Stuart Broad, who no doubt will make way either for Hoggard or James Anderson. Had Sri Lanka been able to score quicker than they did ¨C they managed only a fraction under three runs an over on the turgid pitch ¨C England¡¯s second-innings challenge would have been tougher.

Two teams of local schoolchildren will be involved in their own special training session with England players today as part of the ECB¡¯s Cricket against Hunger partnership.

The Sri Lanka team are due in Galle tomorrow for the first Test played on a rebuilt ground that is barely ready. Another left-arm fast bowler, the distinctly promising Chanaka Welegedara, has been added to a squad that already includes two similar bowlers in Chaminda Vaas and Sujeewa de Silva and two must play in view of the ankle operation that Dilhara Fernando is to have in Australia, revealed by The Times yesterday. Tillekeratne Dilshan has replaced Jehan Mubarak.

Warwickshire beat various suitors yesterday when they signed Sanath Jayasuriya to play in next year¡¯s Twenty20 Cup. The 38-year-old veteran of 403 one-day internationals, who retired from Test cricket after the Kandy Test ¨C in which he hit all six balls of an over from James Anderson for fours ¨C will still be in trim because he is intending to carry on playing one-day internationals and Twenty20 games for Sri Lanka.

¡°Sanath has vast experience in all forms of cricket but especially the one-day format,¡± Ashley Giles, the county¡¯s director of cricket, said. ¡°He¡¯ll be a great man for the younger members of our squad to learn from.¡±

Was there an element in that statement of relief, too, that Giles, the former England spinner, will no longer have to bowl at him?

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