We will take a lot of positives: Prior

England's cricketers have arrived back in Colombo following Wednesday's defeat against Sri Lanka in the first Test in Kandy. The post-mortems have been postponed until the team recommences training at the Premadasa Stadium on Friday morning, but the players have had a three-and-a-half hour coach ride, not to mention a day of milling around the team hotel, to reflect on how close they came to a draw that would undoubtedly have felt like a win.

No-one would have felt the achievement more proudly than England's wicketkeeper, Matt Prior. After a difficult second half to his debut Test summer in England, and a duck in the first innings at Asgiriya Stadium, Prior rediscovered the combative nature that had first earned him his international call-up, and for two-and-a-half hours of the final afternoon, he combined with Ian Bell to inch England to within 20 minutes of salvation.

"To get so close and fall short at the end was fairly heartbreaking," said Prior, who had made a pugnacious 63 from 147 balls before Muttiah Muralitharan claimed the new ball and deceived him with a high-kicking doosra that deviated just enough to beat the bat. "We knew it was going to be a very tough day, but we as a side will take a hell of a lot of positives going into the next Test."

Muralitharan, unsurprisingly, was the biggest single difference between the sides. Not only did he reclaim his world Test record from Shane Warne, he finished up with the magnificent figures of 9 for 130, completing his 100th wicket in Tests against England. And yet, on that final day in Kandy he was made to wait a full 32 overs before claiming his first victim of the second innings. It's a pyrrhic victory, maybe, but one that Prior was keen to accentuate as a positive.

"When we turned up on the morning, Vaughany [Michael Vaughan] asked us to fight and fight hard, and give it everything we had," said Prior. "It would have been quite easy to lie down and die in that situation, but the fact that we took the game so far and so close, everyone in the squad is going to take a huge amount from that. The fact that Murali had to bowl the number of overs he did to get his first wicket, we'll take a huge amount from that into the next Test."

Murali himself had predicted he'd be made to struggle for breakthroughs in the second innings. The pitch was dusty and slow, which allowed England to adjust to his variations, at least until the new ball came along, when the bounce became steeper and the turn that much quicker. "That was the stage we had to get through," said Prior. "We were literally five overs from saving the game. But Murali is a class act, and that's why he's broken a world record."

Plenty of preparation had gone into combating Murali's menace. Ahead of the tour, the team had practised in the indoor nets at Loughborough, using sponge matting to replicate his awkward variations. But the hardest work, said Prior, has come in the net sessions in Sri Lanka in the three weeks since the team arrived.

"One of the things we've done is basically getting the worst surface you can possibly find, and throwing very quick offspinners or legbreaks onto that surface, and finding a way to survive," said Prior. "The ball could go into you, away from you, over you, or under your feet. We've done a lot of training involving the worst-case scenario. Obviously you hope for the best, but in practising the worst-case, it feels a little bit easier when you come to a Test match."

For the majority of their partnership, Prior and Bell made survival look very easy indeed, so much so, in fact, that Prior admitted he had briefly sized up a push for the 350 runs England needed for victory. He certainly didn't bat like a man under pressure to justify his place, and though that may have stemmed from the futility of England's position - they were 139 for 6 when he came to the crease - he insisted it was all in a day's work for an international cricketer.

"When you play international sport, you're under pressure all the time," said Prior. "You put yourself out there and that's why you do all your training, so that you can survive in the pressure-cooker. When you're walking out to save a Test match on the fifth day with the best spinner ever bowling, you're going to be under a lot of pressure, but it comes with the territory, it's how you deal with it. I'll take a lot from the way I batted [on Wednesday]."

"I tried to have a lot of energy in my footwork," Prior said, "so that if I was going forward or back it was a positive movement. When you get stuck it's through indecision, when you're neither back nor forward, and you just hang your bat out to bring the close fielders into play. Also it was important to put the bad ball away. You don't want to be blocking half-volleys, you've got to put a bit of pressure onto the bowler, and not just sit in the hold."

So near and yet so far for England, but Prior was adamant the team would not be downcast about their failings. Neither would they be panicked into a radical rethink of their game plans. "I don't think we need to take any more risks," he said. "Winning Tests here is not about risks, it's about being patient. You have to be putting yourself in a position to win a Test, rather than taking risks and being out of the Test before you start. We'll review the match tomorrow, but in the one-dayers, we went 1-0 down in Dambulla, and came back. There's no reason we can't do it again."