The Sri Lankan team was left shell-shocked when the visiting English team whitewashed them 3-0 in the recently concluded Test series. England won the third Test by 42 runs as Ben Foakes bagged the Man of the Series. But, what made news was Sri Lankan spinner Lakshan Sandakan. He dismissed the dangerous all-rounder Ben Stokes twice in the span of four overs.
One the first occasion, Stokes was looking to play a cover drive, but he was caught by the covers fielder as he could not play it along the ground, and on the second time, he was defending a ball but found the outside edge and was caught at first slip. But, Stokes was lucky on both the occasions as he was not out on both occasions as the bowler had coincidentally overstepped on both occasions.
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The Sri Lankan spinner still managed to pick up seven wickets in the game, which comprised of a five-wicket haul in the second innings. The incident took place when Stokes was on 22 of 32 when it happened. Stokes may not have looked comfortable against the spinner, but still managed to amass 57 runs.
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While the English southpaw may consider himself to be the luckiest man on earth at the moment, an analysis by Sky Sports later revealed that Sandakan bowled a lot of no-balls in the game. they even claim that the spinner’s 40% deliveries weren’t legal.
The broadcaster Sky found that out of the 30 deliveries that Sandakan bowled during the day in his five-over spell in the morning, 12 were no-balls but the umpires managed to detect only two of them – the ones that dismissed the England all-rounder. The visitors have had won the first two games of the series by a decent margin of 211 and 57 runs respectively.