The final night was Harry Brook’s but Joe Root still took the series, as he usually does in Sri Lanka. It was here that he began his stratospheric run against the red ball, a double hundred at Galle in 2021 the first of 24 Test tons in the next five years. Go back to 2014, his first visit to the country with England, and there’s an unbeaten 50-over century in Pallekele, a trick he repeated on Tuesday in Colombo.
As Root and Brook sat on the Premadasa outfield after England’s 53-run win in the deciding one-day international, it was the former’s shirt that one supporter repeatedly pleaded for from the stands, never mind what the captain had just done. Local admiration is expected when the 35-year-old has never left a tour of Sri Lanka without at least one match winning knock.
