Slack spin bowling from Upul Chandana, and generous medium pace meant there were plenty of runs for the top of the Hampshire order.Giles White, a 26-year-old, mixed precise and thunderous hitting to make is top score in the first class game There were 23 fours in his 156. For the visitors, the match was a last chance for contenders for the last couple of places at The Oval: a third seamer or a second spinner? So when Sri Lanka won the toss, Hampshire were asked to bat, despite a benign wicket.On the evidence of yesterday's performance, the faintly dismissive analysis of Sri Lanka's chances looks as if it might be right. William Kendall's flamboyant 59 included 11 fours; the 20-year-old Derek Kenway managed a quick 38, but none of the other Hampshire batsmen seized the opportunity to swell their average by a run or two.It was probably just as well that White ran out Robin Smith for 11 when the score was 208. Batting until the end of the day, White got nearly half of Hampshire's runs They would have been embarrassed without them. Maybe the support bowling - so effective in one-day games - is just not sharp enough to push for the win in a five-day affair at The Oval.

Ten bowlers were used, and five of the Test team gave the game a miss. Yet the natives still find it hard to take the team seriously, even though they hold the World Cup. Only yesterday, The Times described the Oval Test as "carrying a sense of any other business" after the South African series. In other words, Sri Lanka are a bit of a distraction on the way to another Ashes series. Disenchantment is infectious and the Sri Lankans approached the last match before the Test rather like a group of semi-detached English professionals. While it may well require Jan Brittin's third century of the series to save them, the figures show that more than two-thirds of the 101 women's Tests have been draws.It may not bring in the crowds but, heck, this is The Ashes.. Hampshire 347-8 v Sri Lanka SRI LANKA play only their second Test in England this week, 17 years after becoming full members of the ICC. She went for a run after hitting the ball to backward point where Jane Broadbent gathered and threw down the only stump she had to aim at before the batsman could regain her ground Australia are favourites but history is on England's side.

The whole of England should have cheered at what happened next. England's opening bowler Clare Taylor, from Yorkshire, twice stood up tall and hooked Fitzpatrick for four off her eyebrows and if you want comparisons imagine Darren Gough doing similarly to Glenn McGrath.Taylor was run out by a piece of breathtaking fielding. Cathryn Fitzpatrick, the world's quickest woman bowler and looking it, is also appropriately menacing. She gave England the hurry-up by coming round the wicket and digging a few in short, a tactic that should disabuse anybody of the notion that women's cricket is just an extended version of all girls together.It accounted quickly enough for the nightwatchman Sarah Collyer who could only manage a high top-edge to the wicketkeeper.