England v Sri Lanka, 2016

At Leeds, May 19-21. England won by an innings and 88 runs. England 4pts. Toss: Sri Lanka. Test debuts: J. M. Vince; M. D. Shanaka.
You can generally rely on a Leeds crowd to provide their own entertainment, especially on Test-match Saturday. A bunch of guys in butchers' overalls chased a cow. A troop of huntsmen in traditional pink spotted a fox, and pursued him mercilessly across the West Stand. A group of Donald Trumps were booed as they took their seats, most loudly by a group of Mexican sombreros. All good clean fun, then - but, as a hapless Sri Lanka were blown away inside three days (and the equivalent of less than two), it was as though the action in the stands was becoming more competitive than the action on the field.

Sri Lanka were well beaten, though not entirely to blame. Their subsidence had been widely predicted, which only underlined the folly of inviting them to the North in rainy May. They were greeted with a surface even more helpful to bowlers than those served up for Yorkshire in the County Championship. Swing and seam were abundant, and the odd ball reared off a length. And, while their pace attack bowled well enough in the conditions, their batsmen came and went in a fiesta of prods and edges: Sri Lanka were bowled out twice in six hours' play. When Anderson castled Pradeep Fernando to end proceedings, it felt merciful rather than clinical, and that is surely not the hallmark of great Test cricket.

For England, well, you can only beat what the Future Tours Programme puts in front of you. Yet, in this first outing of the Test summer, a crushing victory was tempered both by the weakness of the opposition, and by the patchiness of England's own performance. It was a win built almost entirely on four players: Hales and Bairstow with the bat, Anderson and Broad with the ball. They contributed 75% of their team's runs and wickets, and close to 100% of the resolve.

How different things had looked on the first afternoon, when England were 83 for five, and the ghosts of 2014 - and their penultimate-ball defeat by the same opposition at the same venue - were beginning to stir. Bowling first under chrome skies had been an easy decision for Mathews, despite the absence of the injured Dammika Prasad. And there was an unlikely star on an opening day limited to 53 overs by rain, as debutant Dasun Shanaka - selected largely on the strength of a rapid century at Leicester - began his Test career with wickets from his seventh, tenth and 14th balls, at which point his figures read 2.2-2-1-3.

As if he had been doing it all his life, Shanaka located the perfect Headingley length: a little fuller than usual, tempting the drive, but not allowing the batsman to cover any movement. Cook, needing 36 runs for 10,000 in Tests, was lured by a wide one. Compton, fighting for his England career, was neither forward nor back, and edged to slip for an unhappy duck. Root's dismissal was probably the cleverest of all, Shanaka banging in a couple just short of a length, before offering him a wider, fuller delivery in his next over that Root could only steer to third slip. That brought in James Vince on debut: after taking 19 balls to get off the mark, then unfurling a couple of attractive strokes, he too was caught on the drive. Stokes pummelled three successive fours off Eranga, then chipped tamely to mid-on.

Meanwhile Hales, so indulgent in short-form cricket, was attaining monastic levels of self-deprivation. He made just three scoring shots in the first hour and, despite never quite finding his flow, carved out what was then his highest Test score, with a combination of judicious leaves and - his pressure-release shot - back-foot drives. It was a vital innings, not just personally but in the context of the game: after his 141-run partnership with Bairstow, which ended on the second morning when Hales tried to launch Herath down the ground, Sri Lanka never regained the upper hand.

On his home ground, Bairstow alone made scoring look remotely easy. He successfully reviewed an lbw decision after Mathews seemed to have trapped him on 40, and should have been caught and bowled by Pradeep Fernando on 70. But mostly he looked a class apart. Anything straight was shovelled through midwicket; anything wide slapped through point. His voracious running shifted the pressure to the fielders, and he overtook Hales on the second morning, having given him a 32-over head start. As he reached his second Test century, his eyes shot to the heavens. This was the ground where his late father, David, was once cock of the walk, and where his mother, Janet, still works as an administrator.

" I knew exactly where she was," said Bairstow. "Just up on the third floor. I'm sure mum will have had a glass of wine this afternoon to celebrate." Finn helped him add 56 for the ninth wicket, but Bairstow's majestic assurance was the exception, not the rule - as Sri Lanka soon proved. Only Mathews provided much resistance, and he was partially culpable for his downfall, declining to review an lbw to Anderson on the advice of his batting partner, Thirimanne. Hawk-Eye had it missing leg.

Anderson then bowled one of his insouciantly brilliant spells, the sort that renders the middle of the bat superfluous; figures of five for 16, his cheapest five-for in Tests, moved him past Kapil Dev's 434 wickets on the all-time list. Broad, charging down the hill from he Kirkstall Lane End, chipped in with four, prompting Anderson - whose 19 Test wickets at Headingley before this game had cost 41 apiece - to reveal a fundamental change of tactics. "It's taken us nine years to realise we've been bowling at the wrong ends," he deadpanned.

With Sri Lanka's last six wickets falling for 14 inside ten overs, Cook pugnaciously imposed the follow-on late on the second day. Despite three hours of rain that briefly threatened to take the match into a fourth, the clouds parted for long enough on the Saturday for Sri Lanka to fold a second time. A knee injury to Stokes, suffered while bowling on the second evening, left England's attack a man short, but it scarcely mattered.

Anderson ripped out the top order, finishing with match figures of ten for 45, England's best against Sri Lanka (beating Graeme Swann's ten for 181 at Colombo's P. Sara Oval in 2011-12), and the first ten-wicket haul by an England seamer at Headingley since Fred Trueman against Australia in 1961. Finn, preferred to the uncapped Jake Ball of Nottinghamshire, looked out of sorts, but massaged his figures with three wickets in five balls. Mendis scrapped his way to a maiden Test fifty, having been dropped by Bairstow and Vince, though Bairstow finished with nine catches in his first home Test as a wicketkeeper. Sri Lanka's aggregate of 210 runs, meanwhile, was their lowest in a Test in which they had lost all 20 wickets.

In years to come, we may look back on May Test matches in England as a passing phase, a fleeting eccentricity, like the two-day County Championship or aluminium bats. There was little public appetite for this game, with spectators dissuaded by poor forecasts and steep ticket prices. The new Super Series format, under which England claimed the first four points, was on nobody's lips. And so, as the fox and the cow, the butchers and the hunters, Donald Trump and the Mexicans, filed out of Headingley, it was tempting to wonder what it had all been for.
Man of the Match: J. M. Bairstow.