England vs Sri Lanka, 1st T20I, Sri Lanka tour of England, 2026 - CommentaryENG vs SL, 1st T20I, Sri Lanka tour of England, 2026 - Commentary

Sri Lanka need to regroup and quickly as the series moves to Cardiff next. We will be there to bring you all the action from that game. Do join us then. For now, that's it. It's bye bye.

Harry Brook | England Captain & Player of the Match: [On England's near-perfect team performance in the victory] Yeah, exceptional performance, and I'm very proud of the way the boys went about every aspect of the game there tonight. [On Sonny Baker setting the tone with the ball in the powerplay] Yeah, he's been bowling extremely well, and he deserved his opportunity tonight with Jofra missing out, and to bowl three overs in the powerplay is never an easy task, and I think he went for eight runs off his three overs and bagged a couple of wickets in there as well. So I thought he had an amazing night tonight. [On mentally switching from Test cricket to leading England in the T20 series] Yeah, it's not the ideal schedule. If the game would have gone all the way, we would have had one day in between, but we managed to get a couple of training days in and mentally prepare for this game and this series. So thankfully that Test match finished early and we could get down here slightly earlier. [On his success batting at the Utility Bowl and the partnership with Jos Buttler] I don't know, to be honest. Every time we've got a decent score, Jos has been there as well, and he's always been an amazing player for England, and he feels like he's just starting to hit his straps again and play some really good cricket. So that's really nice to see. And one thing that we've spoken about a lot is running twos, and I think there was 22 twos today, which is a phenomenal effort from everybody out there. So that's something to be really proud of as well. [On whether England can improve despite such a dominant performance] I thought we had an amazing night tonight. Communication once again was outstanding. If we're being ultra-critical, we could probably get a few more runs here and there, take earlier wickets, but I thought the performance tonight was near perfect, and the communication once again from the changing room out onto the field was very good.

Charith Asalanka | Sri Lanka Captain: [On whether he would make the same decision to bowl first if he won the toss again] Yes, I think I would have done the same thing. But, you know, it's a tough day out here for us because credit goes to, first of all, Harry Brook and Jos Buttler for their exceptional innings, and at the same time, I think we missed our plans and execution. [On finding positives from the defeat to take into the next match in Cardiff] From my perspective, positive-wise, didn't happen anything for me. But, you know, especially when we are playing with these guys, they have been playing really good cricket, I mean recently, so all three departments must be spot on. [On whether the high-scoring conditions at the Utility Bowl played as expected] Actually, I didn't think about that high, but of course we know that it's always high-scoring venues in England.

21:50 Local Time, 20:50 GMT, 02:20 IST: 13 wins in a row for England against Sri Lanka now in this format. A no-contest this. The target was massive and Sri Lanka struggled in the powerplay and except for a good cameo from Wellalage with the bat, no-one else contributed. Sonny Baker set the tone with a fast and fiery spell in front of his home crowd and the others chipped in. The asking rate kept going out of hand with each passing wicket and Sri Lanka were never in the races tonight. A winning start for Kevin Pietersen who's in the England white-ball setup - he signs some autographs for the crowd. Stay tuned for the post-match stuff....

Liam Dawson to Dushmantha Chameera, THATS OUT!! Bowled!!