Tall attacks, Lord's tons and incredible catchers: Benedict Bermange has the second Test stats.
Benedict brings you the best stats throughout the summer
The statistics from the first Test in Cardiff don't make pleasant reading for Sri Lanka.
The tourists became the eighth team to score 400 in an innings and yet lose by an innings.
The highest score to lose by an innings is India's 459 against South Africa at Centurion last December.
Sri Lanka were all out for just 82 after their
first wicket had added 93 in the first innings.
The most dramatic difference in this respect occurred at Hamilton in 1999. Adrian Griffith and Sherwin Campbell added 276 for the first wicket in the first innings, but the West Indies were all out for 97 second time around.
England have won their
last three Tests by an innings and five of their last seven by that margin. They have previously won three successive Tests by an innings in 1928 and in 1958 (as part of a stretch from 1957 to 1958 when they recorded six innings wins in eight matches). No team has ever won four successive Tests by an innings.
Their innings only lasted 24.4 overs - the
fewest it has ever taken to dismiss Sri Lanka in Test cricket.
Alastair Cook reaches an impressive milestone at Lord's, where he will play his 65th consecutive Test, making him a joint England record-holder alongside:
| Matches | Name | From | Until |
| 65 | Ian Botham | Feb 10 1978 | Mar 2 1984 |
| 65 | Alan Knott | Mar 5 1971 | Aug 25 1977 |
| 65 | Alastair Cook | May 11 2006 | Jun 3 2011 |
If
Dilhara Fernando plays, it will be the start of his 16th different stint in the Sri Lankan team, pushing him ahead of Kumara Dharmasena and Muttiah Muralitharan who both had 15.
Fernando has never played more than four consecutive Tests. The players with the most 'stints' in a Test team:
| Player | 'Stints' |
| Brian Statham (Eng) | 22 |
| Harbhajan Singh (Ind) | 18 |
Jonathan Trott and Mahela Jayawardena have both scored centuries in each of their first two Lord's Tests. The only man with centuries in his first three Lord's Tests is India's
Dilip Vengsarkar in 1979, 1982 and 1986.
Only five of
Chris Tremlett's 35 Test wickets to date have been batsmen without a Test hundred to their name.
England's potential fast bowling attack of Steven Finn (6' 8"), Chris Tremlett (6' 7") and Stuart Broad (6' 5") would probably be the
tallest in Test history.
The only possible competition to this trio is the Curtly Ambrose
(6' 7") / Courtney Walsh (6' 6") / Ian Bishop (6' 5") threesome who played 37 Tests together from 1989 to 1998, winning 16, losing 8 and drawing 13).
England are unbeaten in their last 10 Lord's Tests, dating back to May 2006. Their longest unbeaten stretch at Headquarters is 13 matches from 1962-1971, while Australia were unbeaten there for 18 matches from 1938 to 2005.
With
Jade Dernbach a posible to make his Test debut, England could potentially field five players born in South Africa (Dernbach, Pietersen, Prior, Strauss, Trott). The last time England fielded a team all of whom were born in Great Britain was at Galle in December 2003 (Trescothick, Vaughan, Butcher, Thorpe, Collingwood, Flintoff, Read, Batty, Giles, Johnson, Hoggard).
Andrew Strauss need two catches to become the sixth England fielder to take 100 in the field. Wally Hammond took the fewest matches to get there (76) while the record for all countries is 54 matches by Bobby Simpson.
| Name | M | Cts | Cts/Ml |
| Ian Botham | 102 | 120 | 1.17 |
| Colin Cowdrey | 114 | 120 | 1.05 |
| Wally Hammond | 85 | 110 | 1.29 |
| Graham Thorpe | 100 | 105 | 1.05 |
| Graham Gooch | 118 | 103 | 0.87 |
| Andrew Strauss | 83 | 98 | 1.18 |
