“They complement each other beautifully”: How England’s spinners out-bowled Sri Lanka to secure series win

England’s series win over Sri Lanka has broken new ground in many ways.

The 2-0 scoreline is the side’s first away win since beating South Africa in 2016, their first in Sri Lanka for 17 years and Joe Root’s first away series victory as captain on the back of his first century outside England as skipper.

But while the positives are almost endless for England, with every player contributing, it is undoubtedly those who took the 20 wickets required for victory who stole the show.

That’s because for only the third time in 363 Tests England won a match without a seamer taking a wicket. Spinners accounted for 19 of the 20 Sri Lankan wickets, with Ben Stokes’s run-out of Dimuth Karunaratne in the first innings the only exception.

They did it by out-playing the hosts at their own game. After the win in Galle, Sri Lanka produced a dry, turning wicket in Kandy, hoping to accentuate their traditional strengths and highlight England’s supposed weaknesses.

Instead England’s spinners, Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid and Jack Leach, took on the responsibility and out-bowled their counterparts convincingly to seal a 57-run win.

James Anderson, England’s all-time highest Test wicket-taker, was happy to take a back seat as the off-spinner, leg-spinner and left-arm spinner grabbed hold of the match, with Root himself also chipping in with one wicket.

“The three of them complement each other beautifully,” Root said. “Jack gives a lot of control, and the fact that they all spin the ball differently does help. It brings a lot of variations and gives the batters something to think about all the time. When pressure is building at one end, it allows Mo and Rash to be really aggressive, change the game and take important wickets, which they’ve done on so many occasions.”

The fact England have three quality spinners of differing styles is testament to the system which produced them and the selectors.

Moeen may be England’s sixth most successful spinner of all time with 159 Test wickets, but a year ago he was suffering from a crisis of confidence having struggled during the 2017-18 Ashes. He insisted on not being referred to as the No1 spinner before rediscovering his mojo in the summer.

Just nine months ago Rashid had turned his back on first-class cricket altogether, intent on focusing on white-ball formats instead of “going through the motions”.

Meanwhile, newcomer Leach’s match-winning eight wickets in Kandy has taken him to 13 at an average of 19.5 in the last two games, despite having been behind both Mason Crane and Somerset team mate Dom Bess until recently.

The Somerset left-armer has learnt his trade on the spinning Taunton wicket and turned up to Sri Lanka ready to make a difference, despite bowling just 13 overs in the reduced warm-up matches. Root has been delighted with his impact.

“The impact Jack’s had, the way he’s performed on these surfaces and has shouldered that pressure for someone who has not had a huge amount of experience, has been brilliant,” he said.

There has been a lot of discussion recently of England’s new approach to batting – how they’ve taken lessons learned in the one-day environment and applied them to the Test match arena. And that was evident in Kandy as Root, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Ben Foakes kept the run-rate high throughout with positive intent.

However, it is the way England have identified, developed and implemented their strategy with spin bowling that formed the basis of their achievements in Sri Lanka.