Joe Root urges England to ‘stay hungry’ for challenges ahead after sealing Test series win in Sri Lanka

England walked out on day four of their second Test in Galle with everything still to do in a game but left the field deep in the evening session with a six-wicket victory under their belts.

To get there the tourists needed to be ruthless with the ball and resilient with bat and found a handful of key performers to carry them over the line.

Yorkshire’s Dom Bess and fellow spin bowler Jack Leach shrugged off their first-innings frustrations, when they drew a blank across 64 overs, by taking four wickets each as the hosts imploded for 126 all out.

Then, opener Dom Sibley shelved his run of low scores to make 56 not out as he and the fluent Jos Buttler (46no) led their team to their target of 164.

England will enjoy their achievement before swiftly departing for India and an even stiffer four-Test series, the next staging post in a packed 2021 that concludes with an Ashes trip Down Under.

And Yorkshire’s Root – man-of-the-series for his 426 runs – was looking forward rather than back.

“That is exactly what we wanted. The challenge now is to replicate this over and over again as a team,” he said.

“We have to look at this as a platform, a starting position, and not be happy with what we’ve achieved here. We’ve got four very important games coming up against arguably the best team in the world in their own conditions. But the guys know there is so much further this group can go. We have just got to stay hungry and we have just got to keep looking to get better.

“We’ll have to be at the top of our game to win out in India, but we couldn’t be in a better place to go and challenge them.”

Sheffield-born Root will be particularly satisfied that the final day of the Sri Lanka series saw less-established squad members step up.

Another day of wickets from James Anderson or more runs from himself might have achieved the same result but to see Leach, Bess and Sibley take the burden was a positive development for the squad.

“It’s nice to see their hard work paying off,” added Root. “We’ve had good conversations about how to play in these conditions with bat and ball and I thought they executed really well.

“They know they want to keep getting better, that there’s further they can go and more they can do. It’s exciting.”

Sibley falls firmly into that category, having emerged from scores of four, two and zero to play his part in a memorable win.

He was overheard on the stump microphone during his innings telling wicketkeeper Niroshan Dickwella he was unsure whether he would hold his place in India given his run of form.

“I’ve had a bit of a stinker in this series,” said Sibley after the match. “I started to doubt myself a little bit before today. It was nice to spend some time at the crease and give myself a chance.

“Watching Joe Root makes you feel a little inadequate to be quite frank! He’s made it look so easy.”

“It was just a case of believing, and trying not to doubt myself too much even though I’d had three failures to the same bowler (Lasith Embuldeniya).”

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers. Click HERE to subscribe.