When De Silva obliged the bowler responded with a mouthed aside and a sarcastic round of applause

When De Silva obliged, the bowler responded with a mouthed aside and a sarcastic round of applause.With the umpires obviously under orders from the match referee to nip any flashpoints in the bud, A V Jayaprakash, of India, quickly moved in to have a word with Hussain. In truth, the incident seemed to be no more than a gesture of irritability, the boundary being the only one Caddick was hit for in his 16 overs.Arguably more controversial was Hussain’s gesture to Jayaprakash, whom he appeared to wave away. In Pakistan before Christmas, the England captain had done the same thing to an umpire in Peshawar. Then, as now, the implication seemed to be: You get on with your job of making decisions and I’ll get on with looking after my team.

Afterwards, the match referee, Hanumant Singh, said he had spoken to the umpires about the incident.To add to the frustration, Sri Lanka played it perfectly. Eschewing their usual gung-ho approach, they went for occupation rather than quick thrills. Even De Silva was subdued though he did swat Croft for a six and a four in the space of four balls in a brief display of firepower.Atapattu, an opener who has scored three double centuries, was one-paced throughout his innings. By the close he had just failed to keep pace with the overs, scoring 83 from the 90 bowled. Mind you, with a highest score of 20, on the recent tour to South Africa, he just looked pleased to spend some time in the middle.In some respects England can count themselves unfortunate. On a slow pitch, already displaying ominous puffs of dust, batting first was always a priority and Sri Lanka’s batsmen are seeing it at its best. As in other big matches where the toss has been crucial, the Wanderers last winter and Sydney the winter before, England failed to win it.Despite that early setback, the bowlers showed admirable discipline, their collective efforts conceding less than two and a half runs an over.

With luck it should have been better, with a slashed half chance off De Silva failing to stick and two close decisions – too close for television replays to be conclusive – given the batsman’s way.More telling, perhaps, is that the wheels did not come off, something the early wicket of Sanath Jayasuriya no doubt contributed towards. In his brief stay, Jayasuriya hit three fours, all of them off Darren Gough. It would have been four, but Craig White intercepted to take a stinging catch in the gully.White took another at short extra cover after lunch to remove Kumar Sangakkara, who had made 58. The left-hander, a law student at Colombo University, looked untroubled until he used his feet to drive Robert Croft firmly into the Yorkshireman’s hands. Neither spinner turned it consistently and Ashley Giles spent much of his time bowling over the wicket in search of something out of the footholes.

England were also unfortunate that overnight rain raised the humidity level to steam bath levels once the sun had burned off the early cloud. The wilting heat – 35C and 80 per-cent humidity – sucks the energy out of players. In such conditions, bowlers can lose up to six pints of fluid an hour, which, unless replenished regularly over a six-hour day, can amount to a third of a player’s body weight.Dehydration is the big danger is such conditions. On a tour to Sri Lanka with England A, in 1991, Tim Munton left the field seeing pink elephants. To prevent anything similar recurring, the team’s physiologist, Nigel Stockhill, keeps a close eye on players, making them drink up to six litres of isotonic fluid in every two-hour session.Stockhill also weighs them four times a day, and keeps urine colour charts to compare samples in the game. At tea yesterday, Gough’s was said to be the same shade as the brew coming out of the pot.

In a throwback to the golden age, the players also wore neckerchiefs. Unlike the pioneers, these are impregnated with special crystals to keep them cool, something that did not work for Caddick.The decision to play Caddick was an about-turn on the previous day’s thinking. So far the case for him looks to be based on nothing more than a miserly run-rate. Indeed, with a ball bursting the surface of the pitch in the third over, it is difficult to see him coming into his own as the game goes on. His time to shine, at least in a wicket-taking capacity, was the first hour when the ball was new and unexpected cloud cover kept temperatures down.Caddick has no trickery about him, either as a bowler or as a person.