On the Old Trafford ground where Shane Warne bowled the ‘Ball of the Century’ in 1993, Sri Lanka spinner Prabath Jayasuriya made a bid for the modern-day equivalent by dismissing England’s Harry Brook in stunning style on Thursday.
Brook had been in fine touch while making an unbeaten fifty to take England to 176 for four at Tea on the second day of the first Test, a first-innings deficit of just 60 runs.
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But the 25-year-old rising star of English cricket had added just three runs to his interval 53 when he was turned inside out by a ball from left-armer Jayasuriya that dipped in on the line of middle and leg stumps before spinning sharply and bouncing to clip the top of off stump.
Brook’s exit left England 187 for five, still 49 runs adrift of Sri Lanka’s 236 in the first of this three-Test series.
Australia leg-spin great Warne, who died aged 52 two years ago, marked his first ball in Ashes cricket with a celebrated delivery at Old Trafford that pitched outside leg-stump and then spun viciously across Mike Gatting to clip the off-bail.
So bemused was Gatting by his dismissal that the late Richie Benaud, himself a former Australia leg-spinner, remarked during his television commentary, “Gatting has absolutely no idea what has happened to him — and he still doesn’t know.”
