Three Matches, Three Collapses: England Finish the Sweep With Sixty-Two Balls Unused at Old Trafford

A three-match series is too short to hide in. Sri Lanka arrived at Old Trafford having lost by 119 runs at Southampton and by six wickets at Cardiff, and the pattern of both defeats was identical: a reasonable position, then a sudden emptying-out of the middle order. On Saturday they found the same trapdoor a third time, in almost exactly the same part of the innings, and this time the collapse was the most complete of the lot — five wickets for seventeen runs, all out for 124 with seven deliveries of their allocation unused.

England, who had won the toss and bowled, treated the reply as a formality and were not wrong to. Jos Buttler made 62 not out from 32 balls, Harry Brook 33 from 21, and the target was passed in the tenth over. Eight wickets, sixty-two balls remaining, and a 3-0 series whitewash.

The uncomfortable truth for Sri Lanka is that this was their most competitive bowling display of the tour and it made no difference, because 124 is not a total you can bowl to.

England's bowling here was a study in shared load rather than individual destruction. Six bowlers, none of them given four overs except Jamie Overton and Will Jacks, and the two wicket-takers at the top — Sonny Baker and Jofra Archer — between them bowling only 6.5 overs for four wickets.

Baker's series has been the quiet story of the tour. Three for 12 at Southampton, and now 2 for 17 from 3.5 here to collect the match award; he has bowled with the new ball and come back at the death, and the economy has held in both phases. Nissanka fell at 52, and the innings never found a replacement engine.

But the wickets that actually decided it belonged to Jacks. An off-spinner given a full four overs in Manchester in September is an unusual selection, and he took 2 for 31 through the middle when Sri Lanka needed a partnership more than they needed boundaries. Overton's 4-0-15-1 was the tidiest set of the night. Between them they owned the window in which a T20 innings either accelerates or dies, and Sri Lanka did not accelerate.

The chase was Buttler's. Thirty-two balls, seven fours, two sixes, and a second-wicket stand of 85 in 39 with Brook that ended the contest before the ninth over was out. It was not a night that demanded invention; it demanded that nobody get careless, and Buttler simply did not.

Sri Lanka's problem is now specific enough to be diagnosable, which is at least something. It is not the top order — Pathum Nissanka has begun well in every match of this series, and his 36 from 24 here, with three sixes, was again the fastest start either side managed in the powerplay. It is what happens after the fourth wicket.

At 107 for 4 in the fourteenth, with Kamindu Mendis set on 35 and eight overs of batting depth still nominally available, Sri Lanka were heading for something in the 150s. Mendis fell at 114. Tharindu Ratnayake made 3 from 8. Eshan Malinga was run out for 0. Wanindu Hasaranga, the one man in the lower half capable of clearing the rope at will, was out hit wicket for 7. Then Madushanka was caught and it was finished: 124 all out in 18.5 overs, the last five wickets for seventeen runs.

Three matches, three innings that died in the same phase of the game. Charith Asalanka's side are not being outclassed for the first twelve overs of a game. They are losing the habit of finishing one. That is a fixable thing, and there are three ODIs starting on Tuesday in which to start fixing it — but it needs to be named honestly first.

Old Trafford in mid-September, under lights, was expected to offer the seamers something, and early on it did — Sri Lanka lost Udara at 22 and Mishara at 39, both caught. But the surface was not the villain. It was slow rather than seaming, and the evidence for that is Jacks and Liam Dawson being trusted with six overs between them and conceding 48 for three wickets.

England's chase settled the question entirely. Buttler hit seven fours through the off side without ever having to force the pace, and Sri Lanka's seamers found no assistance whatsoever — Nuwan Thushara went for 29 from two, Eshan Malinga for 34 from 1.4. There were also eighteen extras in England's 126, which on a night when the ball was not misbehaving is a discipline problem rather than a conditions problem.

Sonny Baker took the match award, but the series belonged to Harry Brook, and 170 runs across three innings understates it slightly, because 114 not out of them came in one evening at Southampton in a stand of 128 in ten overs with Buttler.

What was notable here was how little Brook needed to do. He came in at 22 for 1, played 21 balls for 33, hit one six, and was run out with the target 18 away — a dismissal that could not have been less consequential. A captain in the middle of a run of form usually wants the innings; this one had spent the series making sure his side would not need him to. There is something to admire in a Player of the Series award that ends with the recipient being run out for 33 because the match was already gone.

CricIntel did not publish a preview for the third T20I — we previewed the first at Southampton and left the dead rubber alone. In that first preview we leaned towards England on home conditions and their July form, flagged that the toss winner would want to bowl, and got both right. Across the series we also called Sonny Baker as one to watch after his 3 for 12 in the opener; he ended it with the match award in Manchester, so we will take that one.

What we did not foresee was the margin. Predicting an England series win was straightforward. Predicting that Sri Lanka would not push a single match past the fourteenth over was not, and we would not have written it if we had been asked.

The T20Is are done and the fifty-over leg begins on Tuesday at Chester-le-Street, followed by Headingley and The Oval. That format should suit Sri Lanka better — it gives Nissanka and Mendis room to build rather than asking them to accelerate into a collapse — but it also gives England's attack more overs to find the same weakness.

Things to track: whether Asalanka reshuffles a middle order that has now failed three times in the same way; whether Hasaranga is used higher up, because batting him at seven in a 124-run innings is wasting the only power Sri Lanka have below the top four; and whether England rest Archer, who bowled only three overs here and has a long winter in front of him. For Buttler, 62 not out from 32 in a nine-over chase is the kind of innings that keeps a place without ever being tested. The ODIs will test it.