England captain Harry Brook focused on the positives after his team suffered a 19-run defeat to Sri Lanka in the first ODI in Colombo.
Kusal Mendis (93 not out) and Janith Liyanage (46) set Sri Lanka on their way before a quick-fire 25 from Dunith Wellalage at the death saw the hosts post a challenging total of 271.
The visitors were then undone by Sri Lanka’s spinners as half-centuries from Ben Duckett (62) and Joe Root (61) plus a Jamie Overton cameo (34) proved inadequate, with England all out for 252 in the end.
Brook sticks to the positives
“Lovely to get back to the day job. Unfortunately, we lost the game, but there’s still a lot of positives to take from today,” Brook told reporters post-match.
“With the batting power we have, it only took us to get off to a flyer for us to break the back of that chase. On another day, we knock that off three down.
“The pitch got a little bit more extreme, the turn and lack of bounce. It was proving very difficult to start as a batter out there.
“Ducky and Rooty made it look fairly easy when they were set and going, but they both came off and said it was hard to start on there – just getting used to the turn, bounce and sometimes the lack of spin when it just skids through.
“That’s something we’ve got to look at as a batting unit, and hopefully we can take some positives forward into the next couple of games.”
World Cup spot in jeopardy
With England having lost 11 of 15 ODIs in 2025, another string of defeats in Sri Lanka would risk their automatic qualification spot for the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
“That’s been spoken about a hell of a lot in the last year or so, but we just want to try and be in the moment as much as possible,” Brook admitted when questioned on the topic.
“Sri Lanka have just outperformed us there.”
The 26-year-old added: “I thought we bowled really well through the middle. The spinners bowled exceptionally well.
“Obviously, they got hold of us in the last over, but that’s part of white-ball cricket.
“They’re a very good side. They’ve got some extremely good spinners as well – they were getting enough out of the surface to be able to get us to miss the ball.
“They challenged us in lots of different departments and they had a good game.”
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