Crawley, Pope find form as England draw warm-up

KUTANAYAKE, Sri Lanka: Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope hit fifties as England scored fluently on the third day of their warm-up game against a Sri Lanka Cricket XI in Katunayake before the game petered out into a draw.

England resumed on 39 for 1 on Monday after bowling the hosts out on the second day of the match.

Crawley soon got into his groove in partnerships with Joe Denly and Ben Stokes, rocketing towards his ton as he found the boundary with regularity before lunch. But having reached the interval unbeaten on 91 off 98 balls, he chipped the first ball after the resumption to silly mid-off, falling short of what would have been a second ton in England whites after a century in the warm-up game in Wharangei on the tour of New Zealand.

“I know what it’s going to be like here,” said Crawley. “It’s going to turn while the seamers will be skiddy with lower bounce so you just prepare for that mentally and go from there.”

Ben Stokes was promoted to No. 4 after lasting only five balls in the first innings, and after playing himself in, decided to put his foot down at the start of the 31st over. He dispatched Duvindu Tillakaratne’s left-arm spin for four boundaries off the first four balls, before holing out looking to send the fifth over long-off.

Keaton Jennings was given another opportunity to stake his claim for inclusion in the Test side, coming in at No. 6, but fell lbw trying to reverse-sweep Sangeeth Cooray’s offspin on 23.

Pope made 77, scoring a much lower proportion of his runs in boundaries than Crawley had and instead ticking over by finding gaps to get off strike.There was time in the middle too for Ben Foakes and Sam Curran, and the teams bumped fists after the latter was dismissed for 26.