Ten-wicket Anderson banishes painful Lanka memories

Anderson finished with match figures of 10 for 45 as England completed an innings and 88-run win over Sri Lanka inside three days to go 1-0 up in the three-Test series. 

It was all a far cry from events in Leeds in 2014 when England last man Anderson was reduced to tears after his gutsy tail end resistance ended off the penultimate ball of the match as Sri Lanka won by 100 runs to seal their first Test series win on English soil. 

This time, however, it was a very different story as England enforced the follow-on against a Sri Lanka side who collapsed to 91 and 119 all out after the hosts had made 298 featuring man-of-the match Jonathan Bairstow’s 140 on his Yorkshire home ground and a Test-best 86 from opener Alex Hales. “It’s very different,” Anderson told Sky Sports when asked to compare his emotions with those of two years ago.

“It’s nice to put that to bed well and truly. We were frustrated last time by Sri Lanka, losing that series when they were last over here.” 

“We’ve got off to a good start here and hopefully we can carry that on at Durham (where the second Test starts on Friday) next week.” 

This match saw Lancashire swing specialist Anderson, already England’s most successful Test match bowler, move up to sixth in the all-time standings with 443 wickets. “It’s been a good week for us,” said Anderson. “The knocks from Jonny Bairstow and Alex Hales -- it’s just shown how crucial they’ve been to this win.” 

“On a pitch that’s helping the bowlers, conditions helpful for the bowlers, cloudy all week -- not nice for batting -- so those two guys deserve a lot of credit for getting us into the position we got into and then all four seamers did a fantastic job.” 

Many pundits had predicted that a Sri Lanka side without retired batting greats Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene would struggle against the moving ball in English conditions and skipper Angelo Mathews made no attempt to minimise the scale of this loss.