NOTTINGHAM: Magnificent Muttiah Muralitharan mesmerised the English batsmen at Trent Bridge on Monday with some brilliant off-spin bowling, as he demolished England with an eight-wicket haul in the second innings.

Among his victims was the England captain Andrew Flintoff, caught in the leg trap for his second nought of the match.

After tea, Murali bowled Geraint Jones who had set a record by going 44 Test innings without a duck and it seemed he might take all ten wickets. Murali's chances of ten ended when Matthew Hoggard was run out at 136 but he still had Jon Lewis lbw. The last bowler to perform this rare feat was India's Anil Kumble against Pakistan at Delhi in 1998-99.

Sri Lanka added 36 runs in 45 minutes before it was all out, leaving England to make 325 in around 168 overs. Chamara Kapugedera's brave innings of 50 was soon over when he was caught at short leg by Alastair Cook in the second over. Lasith Malinga had a swing and collected four fours in 16 balls; Chaminda Vaas sent his unbeaten aggregate for the match to 72 and Muralitharan warmed up for his bowling spell for a few minutes before he became Monty Panesar's fifth victim.

That fine piece of bowling — 37.1-13-78-5 — will have glued Panesar into the Test team for the foreseeable future; just as Ashley Giles is about to return too. There has never been much doubt about his bowling, but the rest of his cricket is inept at best, his fielding alone will make him a target for those loud Australian fans and the idea of him falling to pieces Down Under this winter comes to mind each time he takes the field. Perhaps he and Giles will both go although left arm spin has never been a great success there.

Odds on favourite

Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss began with such a sure touch that money piled on England to the extent that it was odds on favourite at lunch: to make the highest score of the match in the fourth innings, to break records to win, to defy one of the greatest off-spinners of all time? But as the early morning gloom turned to sunshine so the air of optimism grew and by lunch 49 had been sliced off the total even though there were signs of trouble to come. Still, it was Murali's tenth over with 84 on the board before Trescothick was out, jamming his bat down on a ball that squatted.

Hesitant from start

Strauss reached 50 for the first time since March in Mumbai, but Cook, who had been hesitant from the start, was lbw to Murali at 104. That brought in Pietersen, the key to the whole innings and apparently none the worse for his hamstring injury the night before. It had certainly not affected his bits of theatrical business, but Murali was also preening himself. It looked as if Strauss had wandered down the pitch to remind Pietersen "you can't win the match with one shot" but a couple of balls later he could not control the off-spin and was caught by Jayawardene at slip. At 111 — the devil number again — for three, England was no longer odds on in anyone's book. The dismissal "c Jayawardene b Murali" occurs 57 times in Test scorebooks around the world, the commonest combination except for dismissals that include a wicket-keeper.

Tillekaratne Dilshan cupped two easy catches to get rid of Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff in four balls by which time Murali had taken five for 30 and four for seven in 31 balls. Before Trescothick was out, his figures read 9-2-20-0, but in the next nine overs he had destroyed the England innings as comprehensively as any bowler has ever done. Paul Collingwood was given out after a long consultation between the third umpire and his television set so that Dilshan had taken three successive catches and Murali the 633rd wicket of a wonderful career.

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