• Watch: Sri Lankan bowls ‘Ball of the Century’

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    On the Old Trafford ground where Shane Warne bowled the ‘Ball of the Century’ in 1993, Sri Lanka spinner Prabath Jayasuriya made a bid for the modern-day equivalent by dismissing England’s Harry Brook in stunning style on Thursday.

    Brook had been in fine touch while making an unbeaten fifty to take England to 176-4 at tea on the second day of the first Test, a first-innings deficit of just 60 runs.

    But the 25-year-old rising star of English cricket had added just three runs to his interval 53 when he was turned inside out by a ball from left-armer Jayasuriya that dipped in on the line of middle and leg stumps before spinning sharply and bouncing to clip the top of off stump.

    Brook’s exit left England 187-5, still 49 runs adrift of Sri Lanka’s 236 in the first of this three-Test series.

    Australia leg-spin great Warne, who died aged 52 two years ago, marked his first ball in Ashes cricket with a celebrated delivery at Old Trafford that pitched outside leg-stump and then spun viciously across Mike Gatting to clip the off-bail.

    So bemused was Gatting by his dismissal that the late Richie Benaud, himself a former Australia leg-spinner, remarked during his television commentary: “Gatting has absolutely no idea what has happened to him — and he still doesn’t know.”

    © Agence France-Presse

    Photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images

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    Simon Borchardt