The drawn series that wasn't

Sri Lanka last night wrapped up the third and last Test match against England at Nottingham, to level the series 1-1.

Given England's usual dominance at home, and Sri Lanka's troubles abroad, this was an utterly unexpected result. Even though Michael Vaughan, Steve Harmison, Ashley Giles and Simon Jones were out of the team with injury, able and (sometimes) better replacements took their places. England will look at this drawn series as a failure, and Sri Lanka will think of it as a victory.

What was expected though, was Muralitharan's magic as he single handedly tore through England's fourth innings. Murali took the first wicket at 84, and the second at 104, before he inflicted a serious collapse as wickets fell at 111, 120, 120, 125, 132. By this time, England was 7 wickets down and Murali had 7/36. Unfortunately, Chamara Kapugedera then took the eighth wicket via a run out, and immediately apologised to Murali for wrecking his sequence. He ended up with 8/70 and 11 wickets in the match as Sri Lanka won by 134 runs.

England, who once looked like world beaters, are now looking very shaky. November 23 can't come soon enough.