For half of his first day living out the International Cricket Captain video game he will no doubt have played in his youth, Ollie Pope was forced to do little more than hit ‘simulate innings’, sit back and watch the magic unfold.
Things got a little trickier into the afternoon sessions, when half-centuries from Dhananjaya de Silva and Milan Rathnayake led a Sri Lankan fightback and gloomy conditions left England’s stand-in skipper restricted to bowling spin from both ends.
