England vs Sri Lanka: Steven Finn backs bowlers to seal series win on day four

Steven Finn has backed England to wrap up the series against Sri Lanka on Monday morning after the tourists frustrated Alastair Cook’s side on day three of the Second Test at Chester-le-Street.

England dismissed their opponents for 101 in the first innings and enforced the follow-on to increase hopes they could pull off a second successive three-day win following their innings rout in the first Test at Headingley.

But half-centuries from captain Angelo Mathews, opener Kaushal Silva and Dinesh Chandimal helped Sri Lanka reach the close on 309 for five to drag this match into a fourth day.

Needing 88 more runs to make England bat again, Sri Lanka are still facing a heavy defeat and a 2-0 deficit ahead of next week’s final Test at Lord’s.

And Finn, who picked up the wicket of Silva, is expecting England to finish off the job in clinical fashion on day four.

“In an ideal world we would have wrapped it up today but we’ve had three bowling innings where everything has gone perfectly so on this particular wicket it was always going to be tough to get 10 wickets in a day two days in a row,” said the Middlesex fast bowler.

“I thought we bowled well and applied ourselves well, which we had to do on that wicket because it is very slow and very low.

“We’ve got a four-over old ball tomorrow morning and we’ve seen that the new ball has done a lot of damage so far in the series.

“We’ve got two of the best new-ball bowlers in the world in Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad and we’re playing four seamers. So I think tomorrow morning’s a great opportunity for us to come in and make early inroads, expose that Sri Lankan tail and try and take advantage.”