England victory marred by ugly confrontation

England opened their tour with a convincing victory by an innings and 15 runs against a Sri Lankan Board XI at the Premadasa Stadium. However, the match was overshadowed by an ugly incident in Saturday's afternoon session which saw captain Andrew Strauss and several of his players involved in a heated row with both umpires and opposition batsman Dilruwan Perera. It followed a passage of play which had seen Perera edge a James Anderson delivery to first slip. To the naked eye, the catch looked good as Strauss dived forward to scoop the ball up into his hands. Yet Perera, a 29-year-old off-spinner who has played four One Day Internationals, insisted the ball had not carried and, after consultation between Sri Lankan umpires Ravindra Kottahachchi and Ravindra Wimalasiri, he was reprieved. It led to an unsavoury confrontation involving England's players, led by Strauss, Perera and both umpires, which threatened to boil over. Anderson later admitted a valuable lesson has been learned about cricket in the subcontinent, where suffocating humidity and slow wickets can often see tempers rise. "It was just frustrating," he said. "With Straussy being the honest upstanding citizen that he is, he wouldn't lie about something like that. "You have to take his word on it and the other slip and keeper thought he'd taken it, too. ‘Hard to deal with' "Add the heat into it and it was a good lesson for us. Situations like that are going to be hard to deal with in the Test matches and we have to deal with them well. "You're working very hard to take wickets, and seamers aren't going to bowl a huge amount of overs in a spell, so when you get someone out, it is frustrating to have it taken away. "We could have handled it better but I'm sure it's something we'll talk about."