Jayasuriya's men salvage something from sorry tour

Dead games at the end of tournaments can produce strange results. While there was no reason that Sri Lanka should not, at last, have got the better of England in this one-day competition, it was a game that defied the pattern of the tournament's first six matches. Sri Lanka's batting has been highly suspect and their attack has missed Muttiah Muralitharan's ten overs.

There are those who will swear that dead games are a match-fixer's delight. One only has to think back to the 1999 World Cup, when Bangladesh beat Pakistan at Northampton by 62 runs. Nothing hung on that game and it was only very recently that an official enquiry cleared Pakistan's players of any wrong-doing. This, of course, is in no way to suggest that there was the slightest hint of yesterday's match at Old Trafford being fixed. Nevertheless, this type of contest is meat and drink for the unscrupulous, because it is not under the same kind of scrutiny as those where the outcome is important in the context of the tournament.

It is not surprising that the players did not go into this game with quite the single-minded determination they had showed in previous matches. Sri Lanka had more to play for than England yesterday. They needed that victory in order to go home with a degree of pride restored.

One could sense that Sanath Jayasuriya, their captain, was determined to salvage something from their tour. By the same token there was not the slightest suggestion that Nasser Hussain approached this game with anything less than his usual total commitment.

That said, England's batting reflected the knowledge that nothing tangible was at stake. The fact that Michael Vaughan took 4 for 22 with his gentle off breaks may indicate that England's front-line bowlers did not have their minds fully on the job. The fielding was none too clever either. Three catches went down, and much of the ground-work was sloppy. It is to be hoped that winning habits have not been eroded. They will certainly be required for Saturday's final against India.

Happily, the excitement was such that a full-house crowd, who will have handsomely swelled the England and Wales Cricket Board's somewhat depleted coffers, will not necessarily have felt short-changed. Yet these dead matches remain a worry on a number of counts. Of course, they will remain a cricketing fact of life in tournaments like this. They cannot be cancelled because of the income they produce and the tickets that are sold far in advance, but they need careful watching by the authorities.