In the end the match turned on three Yorkies and a yorker. Vishwa Fernando had spent most of this series labouring as Sri Lanka’s second-best bowler called Fernando, but before all of that he started his summer with three matches for Yorkshire in the County Championship, and if he will have learned little about Joe Root and Harry Brook in that time – neither Englishman played in any of those games – it perhaps added a little piquancy to the moments after lunch when he got the ball swinging, and his two temporary kind-of-teammates walking.
Root came into this game averaging an implausible 116.66 in the series, and in their preparation Sri Lanka concentrated heavily on identifying ways of minimising his threat.
