England vs Sri Lanka: Once again, Alastair Cook's team fail to pass final Test

Sixth series on the spin that England have not won the last match

Rain at Lord’s denied England something they have not achieved in their last six Test series - a win in the final Test.

You might think it an irrelevant point, especially when the series, as this one has been, is already won. But finishing strongly is a sign of strength that England have mostly lacked under Alastair Cook’s captaincy and one Trevor Bayliss, their Australian coach, will been keen to rectify.

Australians purvey a remorseless approach to opponents in all sports, though even they have found it difficult to carry that philosophy through to its ultimate conclusion over a five-day cricket match. Only recently have they managed to whitewash England despite winning every Ashes series between 1989 and 2005.

We’ll never know whether Cook’s side, given a fair wind, would have won here and whitewashed Sri Lanka, but they should have done. They last performed the feat against India in 2011, their four wins out of four thrusting them to the pinnacle of the world rankings. Since then gravity has taken hold, as well as a propensity to lose the last Test of a series.

This fallibility has not cost them in three of their last six series, against Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka, as the result had already been decided in their favour. But against New Zealand, the West Indies and Pakistan, it cost them the chance of victory or parity.

Two different thought processes take hold depending on whether a team needs victory to reinforce their dominance or whether they need it to win or save the series.

Arguably the first is the most difficult to get right. Tuning your performance to concert pitch, when the outcome has already been settled, is never easy. It requires conning yourself that it matters when your conscious brain knows that is bunkum, and the main issue has been settled. It also has to fight that demob happiness when both mind and body are looking forward to either a break or the flight home.

In 1992, Essex won the County Championship with two games remaining. Job done we thought. But it was when we beat Derbyshire in the next match, chasing a mammoth 441 against a bowling attack that contained Ian Bishop, Devon Malcolm and Dominic Cork, that Graham Gooch, our captain, got really animated. He told us it was our greatest win of the season because we had raised our game to do it when we didn’t need to, a notoriously difficult feat among professional sportsmen.

It is a very different beast to need to win that final game in order to draw or win a series. A bad mistake can cost you dear. With few modern sides able to play for the draw any more, a bold conservatism tends to be adopted, though one that has not borne dividends for England who have lost the final match of the series on their last three occasions that the series has been alive.

Against Pakistan in Sharjah, eight months ago, England had a 70-run lead in the final Test only to squander it. Set 284 they were dismissed for 156 after being undone by spin.

It was even worse in Barbados, six months before that, a tour that followed England’s ill-fated World Cup campaign. Again they took a decent first innings lead (68 runs) only to capitulate for 123 all out in their second. After an arduous winter this seemed a challenge too far and many will have had their eyes on the flight home rather than the ball.

If those failures can be levelled at the batsmen the defeat to New Zealand at Headingley, albeit in a two-match series in 2014, was down to the bowlers and fielders. Sitting on parity after the first innings (350 apiece), New Zealand managed to make 454 in their second innings.

To score so many in the third innings of the match floored England and they lost comfortably as New Zealand’s bowlers shared the wickets around, often a sign that the batsmen have lost confidence.

With rain interrupting much of the final two days this time at Lord’s, it is difficult to know whether England have surmounted the old obstacle of final match syndrome or not. Cook’s team is far from flawless, with Nick Compton certain to be dropped for the Pakistan series while James Vince and Steven Finn’s will find their roles under close review.

Counteracting those weaknesses was Sri Lanka’s frailty in English conditions at this time of year. Dominating them simply did not require England to be at full bore, if they know what that feels like, something Pakistan, with its impressive bowling power, surely will.