TEST MATCH TALKING POINTS: Rocking Root, rubbish reviews and sweeps galore

The second Test is hurtling along but remains in the balance. Here, The Cricketer takes a look at the key incidents from the third day's play...

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Root’s record

Root’s fine hundred goes down as the highest score by an England captain in Sri Lanka, surpassing Nasser Hussain’s 109 at Kandy in 2001. It was Root's 15th Test hundred in total and just his fourth away from home. It is century No.2 on the subcontinent following his hundred against India at Rajkot.

Jennings undone by an old friend

Both Rory Burns and Keaton Jennings swept effectively in the morning session but one reverse sweep too many saw the Lancashire batsman’s effort brought to an end. The reverse has been kind to Keaton in his career so far, with this representing the first time he has got out playing the stroke.

Jennings was far from the only man to succumb in that fashion, with seven of England’s wickets to fall coming courtesy of attempting a sweep or reverse sweep.

Reviews burned

By lunch on day three, both sides had used up their respective reviews, with three of the four being burned in the space of five deliveries.

England lost their first when Burns - having just brought up his maiden Test fifty - looked to keep his knock alive when pinned lbw by Pushpakumara.

Having squandered one earlier in the day, Sri Lanka’s second went begging as the hosts looked to get rid of England’s skipper but Perera’s delivery was shown to be hitting Root well outside the line.

Ben Stokes was the next to throw a review to the dogs, smacked in front missing the sweep against Dilruwan and England had lost both reviews in the space of five balls.

Those wasted reviews would come back to bite England. Moeen Ali was given out lbw to Dananjaya with replays showing him to be hit outside the line and Adil Rashid falling to the same bowler despite slapping an inside edge into the pads.

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Root goes to his 15th Test hundred

What’s the order?

Right, who’s batting where?

As if it wasn’t confusing enough, at 4.30am in the morning, seeing Jack Leach opening the batting for England, the order shuffled again when Keaton Jennings fell for 26.

In came Joe Root at No.4, but sort of No.3, ahead of Stokes who had just been promoted to No.3 (replacing Moeen Ali who was batting No.3 and is now back to No.7 but also bats everywhere) but today came in No.5, or technically No.4 if we forget about Leach.

Got it? Let’s face it, the whole show these days is just a collection of blokes milling about while we all wait to see Sam Curran walk out to bat.

Rory's maiden fifty

Mr Burns is starting to look the part as a Test opener. After a couple of lowish scores at Galle, day three saw the Surrey man register his maiden Test fifty in an assured knock (full of glorious sweeps) to get England’s second innings off to a fine start. Have England found Alastair Cook’s long-term replacement at the first time of asking?

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