Stokes, 24, tore the cartilage in his left knee while bowling in Sri Lanka’s first innings at Headingley last Friday.
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Broad forced Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews to nick another catch through to Bairstow and Mendis, on 53, was bowled by Anderson off the inside edge.
Dimuth Karunaratne, Kaushal Silva and Kusal Mendis all edged catches to wicketkeeper Bairstow, leaving the tourists in deep trouble at 12 for three.
James Anderson piled on the agony for Sri Lanka as England scored crushing win, by an innings and 88 runs, in the first Test at Headingley on Saturday.
That timescale would rule Stokes out of both of the remaining two Tests against Sri Lanka, at Durham and then Lord’s, starting June 9, as well as the five ODIs and one-off T20 that follow.
Woakes, meanwhile, is back in the reckoning for his seventh cap – having last played Test cricket when England lost the match but won the series against South Africa at Centurion in January.
Cook who had scouted the young keeper said he believed in Bairstow’ s talent, “I remember the first time I saw him play, at Scarborough, he played differently to everyone else we couldn’t stop him scoring”.
England will win the three-Test series with victory in Chester-le-Street, where Durham’s Stokes misses out on playing a first Test on his home ground.
England’s problems are as nothing, however, compared to those of Sri Lanka, who must somehow find a way to make runs if they are to avoid a repeat of their Headingley debacle. Anderson now has 438 Test wickets from 114 matches at an average of 29.18.
His second ball saw Mendis get a thin glance, with Bairstow failing to hold the hard legside chance.
Mendis was dropped four times in all – two clear-cut, the others tough – on his way to a maiden half-century in his eighth Test innings, completed when he clipped Anderson through midwicket for his eighth boundary.
And 93 for four became 93 for five after Mendis’s luck ran out when, trying to leave an Anderson delivery, he deflected the ball onto his stumps. Wickets continued to fall as Sri Lanka slipped to 116 for 7 at tea.
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After the second Test there is a slightly longer gap before the final match of the series starts at Lord’s. Anderson, appropriately, ended the match by clean bowling retreating last man Nuwan Pradeep.
