Birmingham: Sri Lanka swept to a six-wicket victory over England at Edgbaston on Tuesday, sealing a 3-2 victory in their one-day international series. Lahiru Thirimanne scored an unbeaten 60 and Mahela Jayawardene added 53 as the tourists reached 222-4 in reply to England’s 219 all out in the decider of the five-match series.
Earlier, Sachithra Senanayake angered the crowd by controversially running out Jos Buttler. Senanayake ran him out at the non-striker’s end as he backed up out of his ground, albeit after twice warning him in his previous over for pinching yards. Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews, asked by the umpires if he wanted to uphold what was a legitimate appeal, didn’t call Buttler back. “He was taking unfair starts, not only this game but the last game as well, so we gave him two warnings in the spirit of cricket because I don’t know how to stop a batsman from doing that continuously,” Mathews said after the match.
This was only the eighth reported instance of a batsman being run out backing up in an international match. Yet even though ‘Mankading’, the term coined after India’s Vinoo Mankad ran out Australia non-striker Bill Brown during the 1947-48 Sydney Test, remains a legitimate dismissal, there are those who regard it as against the ‘spirit of cricket’.
Alastair Cook boils as buttler runs out of steam
Birmingham: England captain Alastair Cook said he expected the controversial run out of Jos Buttler during the fifth one-day international against Sri Lanka to “spice up” the forthcoming Test series between the teams. Cook insisted a “line had been crossed” after Sachithra Senanayake ran out England’s Jos Buttler as the non-striker backed up during Sri Lanka’s 3-2 series-clinching six-wicket win in the fifth and final one-day international at Edgbaston on Tuesday.
“I’ve never seen it before in a game,” Cook told a post-match press conference.
“I was pretty disappointed with it to be honest with you. You don’t know what you'd do if you were put in that situation, the heat of the moment, until you are. I’d hope I wouldn’t do it,” Cook said. But Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews insisted Buttler had been repeatedly warned before Senanayake took the bails off to send Buttler on his way. “This is just different,” said Cook. “For some reason it’s different. In my opinion there’s a line and that line probably, I think, was crossed today. If he (Buttler) was properly trying to steal a single, I could possibly understand it,” he said.
