Dependable Jack Leach has a big role to play in Colombo

Third Test
Sky Sports Cricket & Main Event, 4.30am Friday

England ended two years of overseas agony in Kandy last week as Joe Root’s men secured their first Test series win away from home since the 2015-2016 winter tour to South Africa.

With the series win over Sri Lanka safely in the bag, the Three Lions' attention now turns to securing a 3-0 series clean sweep – a feat achieved by only Australia (2003-04) and India (2017) on the Teardrop Isle since the turn of the millennium.

Bookmakers are certainly confident that Root’s side can do just that. England are even-money shots to win the third Test which begins on Friday morning, with the Lankans 21-10 to gain a consolation victory in Colombo.

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Spin has predictably played a crucial role in the series with 64 of the 76 wickets to have fallen taken by spinners. Thirty-eight of those came in the second Test – a world record for number of wickets to be taken by spinners in a single Test.

And the trial by turn is set to continue at the Sinhalese Sports Club, a ground where Sri Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan took 166 of his astonishing 800 Test wickets.

England have adopted a three-pronged spin attack of Jack Leach, Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid during the series and that trio will be central to their chances of victory again.

Leach is often typecast as the most dependable of the three, able to hold an end with his unerring consistency while Moeen and Rashid have the ability to bowl wicket-taking deliveries.

But that shouldn’t detract from Leach’s own potency. Indeed, with 13 wickets he has taken only one fewer than Moeen, he has the lowest average of any bowler on show (19.53) and is the only spinner in the series to have an economy of under three runs per over.

Leach is the glue that holds England’s attack together and if he performs at the same level as he did in Kandy, taking 5-83 in the second innings, he will have a huge bearing on England’s chances.

Team news
Jonny Bairstow and Stuart Broad return for the tourists in place of James Anderson, who is rested, and injured all-rounder Sam Curran.

Bairstow is expected to bat at number three but will not displace Ben Foakes behind the stumps.

Sri Lankan skipper Dinesh Chandimal misses out again with a groin injury. Uncapped off-spinner Nishan Peris has been called up in place of Akila Dananjaya, who was reported for a suspect action in the first Test.

Weather
Thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoons of each day. Temperatures around 30C.

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