England vs Sri Lanka 2014

Looks like there is only going to be one result possible

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A draw.

England find themselves being presented with an age old problem, namely, the inability to find a worthy test match spin bowler. Moeen Ali is currently the main spinner - but surely he's predominately a batsmen who is an occasional spin bowler?

Sri Lanka finally all out for 453.
England are chasing quick runs and are 27-0 at lunch.. 149 ahead.

I wonder where the forum's cricket correspondent has gone. A Yorkie get a double hundred and he fails to comment

I'm assuming that England will declare overnight and set Sri Lanka 390 to win, as they are 267/8 with Ballance 104 not out, reaching his century in the final over of the day. But could England have declared earlier?

Cooke obviously thinks that getting Balance a hundred is far more important than winning the match..

He should have 30 mins at the Sri Lankan openers last night

Sri Lanka down to their last wicket pair at the close of play...

How Cooke must have wished that he'd declared and had the Sri Lankans batting last night..

A very dramatic end to the match as England thought they had won, only to see Sri Lanka's last man signal for a DRS review. After seeing what happened there, how can anyone not see the value of the DRS?

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Without the use of DRS England would have won - albeit controversially.

As usual on the last session of the last day of the five day test match a sparse crowd in attendance watched a very close finish.

I know they didnt win,but for a newly revamped team they did ok,maybe Cook should have declared earlier but on what was a fairly flat pitch which offered very little seam movement and no specialist spinner they did well to get 19 wickets in the match,also good to see Root get a double century,Ballance getting a century which gave England a shot at winning the game in the first place,im now looking forward to Friday when hopefully they can take the positives from this game and win the series.

I think Cook's declaration was OK. Giving Sri Lanka half an hour's batting on the 4th day would have meant giving them a reachable target. The real problem was that in a match which went down to the last ball there were 17 overs left unbowled due to slow over rates.