Sri Lanka hit with five penalty runs after one-short incident

Sri Lanka were docked five penalty runs in the third session of the second day at Pallekele, following a strange interpretation of the law governing deliberate short runs by the umpires.

Here's what happened:

Where the umpires took issue with the batsmen, however, was that Roshen did not ground his bat at the non-strikers' end. He had been watching the ball and Moeen, and had seemingly neglected to ensure he completed the run.

Here is where the five penalty runs comes in. Law 18.5.1 states that:

The primary reason for deliberately running a short run - I.e. crossing in the middle of the pitch, then crossing back without touching down, is to ensure the senior batsman in the partnership retains the strike, perhaps in a situation where the batsmen realise it is not possible to complete two runs in their entirety.

Here, however, Roshen was so close to the non-strikers when Moeen stopped the ball, that he could have virtually reached over and grounded his bat. The fact that he didn't appears more the result of an oversight on his part - perhaps he thought he had already completed the first run. In any case, there was no pressure to scamper back for the second. The batsmen jogged it and made it back to their original creases in plenty of time.

It is also important to note that at no point during this pair's 56-run partnership did either batsman turn down a single in order to manipulate the strike. They batted normally, in other words.

The umpires though, have ruled the short run intentional. England had five runs added to their first-innings total as a result, taking their score to 290.

"I don't think Roshen did it deliberately," said Dimuth Karunaratne at the close. "He thought the ball had gone for four so he came back to his partner to give a high five. Those things can happen. It's part of the game, we don't blame him. We are not so worried about the five runs."