England wrap up series victory but empty seats at Lord’s highlight wider cricket problem

England secured the series win, taking a 2-0 lead against Sri Lanka, a first for stand-in captain Ollie Pope

Gus Atkinson claimed five wickets in front of a sparsely-populated Lord’s to wrap up victory against Sri Lanka (Action Images via Reuters)

England claimed a series victory against Sri Lanka, with Gus Atkinson taking five wickets in front of a meagre crowd at the Home of Cricket.

The tourists put up a strong fight, with Dimuth Karunaratne making 55 and Dinesh Chandimal 58, but Atkinson steered England to victory with another five-wicket haul in what has been a memorable maiden Test summer for the Surrey seamer.

Sri Lanka had started the day on 53 for two after bad light had forced a premature end to the evening session the night before, but the result already felt like a foregone conclusion with the tourists needing a world-record 483 to win, and Ollie Pope’s team claimed the 190-run victory just after 5pm on the fourth day.

Throughout the first three days of the Test match, while not sold out, the attendance at Lord’s was fairly solid, despite the start of the Premier League, and a significant improvement on Old Trafford for the first match.

However, the fourth day of play was a markedly different scene, the top tiers of three of the stands around the ground were empty, with others sparsely populated. It was obvious from the mostly empty Tube station before the start of play that the normal buzz would at least be subdued.

The fault arguably rests largely with the Marylebone Cricket Club, with the cheapest adult tickets on sale for £95 on the morning of the fourth day, although under-16s could attend for just £15. The official cheapest for an adult was £80, with £65 offering a restricted view, but those were not available on Sunday morning.

Before the Test match itself, less than 7,500 tickets had been sold for the fourth day. Test cricket might be thriving in England compared to other parts of the world, but the scene at Lord’s painted a bleak picture, especially when the Hundred was sold out and offered a glimpse into a possible future with children allowed in the pavilion and the dress code relaxed.

There was a late backtrack from the MCC following criticism from many, including commentators on BBC’s Test Match Special, to drop the price to £15 for adults and £5 for children after 3.45pm, but that was only announced after 3pm and was not immediately widely publicised.

The players noticed the lack of atmosphere, with Pope admitting after the Test: “It was kind of weird. I think a few of us have been strolling in each day and it was just like, jeez, it seems quiet today.

“So I'm not sure if people expected the game to be done by day four or not. So it's a shame that it wasn't full. But, at the same time, it's been a pretty heavy schedule this summer with, I guess, the 100, T20 blast and a lot of Test matches as well.

“So yeah, a shame it wasn't a full house because it was obviously a good day's play where we had to work hard for those eight wickets.”

Some of the stands were closed because of the low number of spectators (Getty Images)

Guy Lavender, the MCC’s chief executive and secretary, issued a statement in an attempt to explain the situation: “Sales were slower for the fourth day of this match than v West Indies, likely in part to England’s dominant performance at Lord’s earlier this summer, and this Test being later than normal at the end of the school holidays. Earlier this year, we sold out the opening four days of the England v West Indies match and were close to doing so for the first three days of this match.

“From the outset, we priced U16 tickets at just £15 for weekend days of our Test matches and introduced a group discount for day four. It is difficult to dynamically discount tickets in hindsight when thousands of supporters have applied through our 2023 ballot process and paid the full price.”

On the field of play itself, Atkinson continued in the same vein of form since he made his Test debut at the same ground earlier this summer, taking five for 62.

Gus Atkinson stemmed the Sri Lanka fightback with his five wickets (Getty Images)

He has taken at least two wickets in his first 10 innings for England, becoming the seventh bowler in men’s Test cricket to reach the milestone and the first since Brett Lee, who made his debut in 1999.

Sri Lanka’s hopes rested on Chandimal, and were all but scuppered when Kamindu Mendis was caught in the slips by Ben Duckett for just four.

Dhananjaya de Silva became the third Sri Lankan to record a half-century, as the visitors put in a strong fight on day four, as England struggled to turn the screw.

Joe Root dropped Milan Rathnayake on 33, as England’s catalogue of errors dragged the game into the evening session, despite taking the new ball immediately after tea.

However, Atkinson claimed another when De Silva was caught on the crease and played on after two drops in as many balls.