2nd Test	England	v	Sri Lanka
Pre-rating	1129.7		952.6
Form	+28.5		-37.3
Expected Margin	England by 139 runs
Actual Margin	England by 9 wickets
Post-rating	1139.7		939.2

A match that, for three days, threatened to repeat the previous one; albeit on a friendlier batting pitch, though you'd struggle to believe it aft Sri Lanka collapsed for 101 in their first innings. Woakes, Broad and Anderson shared the wickets, following on from Moeen Ali's 155, helped immensely by Sri Lanka seemingly batting for a declaration for much of day two. That they recovered from 3/100 to post 475, with both Mathews (80) and Chandimal (126) finally scoring some runs was something. It showed the fight we expect from them, though the speed of scoring hinted at a hit-out-or-get-out approach that will fail more often than succeed.

They move to Lord's with the series lost, their ranking tanking, but the barest glimmer of hope that their batting will make enough runs to push England deep into a match. A better first innings here and they might have set an intriguing target. Probabilistically though, the batting side we saw through the first three innings of the tour is closer to reality than the one that made 475. A dead pitch or rain aside, England ought to complete the sweep easily.

Rankings at 9th June 2016
1.	Australia	1230.4
2.	India	1160.9
3.	Pakistan	1142.9
4.	England	1139.7
5.	South Africa	1121.5
6.	New Zealand	1024.9
7.	Sri Lanka	939.2
8.	West Indies	848.1
10.	Bangladesh	613.3
12.	Zimbabwe	559.8
9.	Ireland	637.1
11.	Afghanistan	606.0
13.	Scotland	408.0
14.	Namibia	306.5
15.	Kenya	276.4
16.	U.A.E.	221.0
17.	Papua New Guinea	228.1
18.	Netherlands	189.0
19.	Hong Kong	183.6
20.	Canada	147.9

Shaded teams have played fewer than 2 games per season. Non-test team ratings are not comparable to test ratings as they don`t play each other.

Cricket - Ratings - Test 9th June, 2016 20:25:04   [#] [0 comments]