England must not rest on laurels

So there we have it. England won their second warm-up match before Saturday's first Test by five wickets, having drawn the previous match against the Board President's XI last week. With a target of 246 runs, England's batsmen managed not to squander the hard work done yesterday by Matthew Hoggard and Ravi Bopara. Deciding not to repeat their first innings show - for which the word woeful could have been invented - openers Alastair Cook and Michael Vaughan notched up a respectable 58 and 28 respectively. Sadly, for me, Bell disappointed again - caught by the multi-initialled Welegedera (UWMBCA) off a ball from Tillakaratne Dilshan. He had made a mere six.

Pieterson was the other player to get a half-century - de Silva caught him on 59 and Ravi's 21 runs (although today outscored by Owais Shah:33) may have done enough to secure his slot for the Test.

Although I have doubts as to how much one can read into the importance of warm-up matches, one thing is sure. It's always better to win and as we see across all sports, winning breeds winning. Unfortunately I don't think this win was in any way convincing (apart from Hoggy's bowling) and the captain and selectors must feel that there are almost as many unanswered questions today as there were when the team landed in Sri Lanka. Oh, except for knowing that injury or not, Harmison is too much of a risk.

[Image: Getty] [mimitig]