With overcast conditions helping the England bowlers, the visitors lost the overnight duo – Kaushal Silva (79) and Kusal Mendis (25) within the first five overs of the day.
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At stumps England were 279/6, Yorkshire’s Jonny Bairstow the only other batsman to display any real resistance, finishing the day unbeaten on 107.
The tourists’ reply was 49 without loss at that stage – and although Bairstow eventually took the catch down the leg-side off Steven Finn to see off the left-hander, by stumps the total was 162 for one.
Lahiru Thirimanne and Chandimal, who made an admirable 126 in the second Test, briefly resisted.
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England in their second innings were 109 for four at the close of the third day, a lead of 237 runs.
Slip catches saw Anderson quickly double up, and then Chris Woakes (three for 31) take a wicket with his first ball of a spell for the second time in the day, to wrap up the innings.
With 54 runs at 13.5, Vince has scarcely fared any better than Compton in this series, and while he will surely be given the series against Pakistan, he still has much to do to prove himself in Test cricket.
England’s assistant coach Paul Farbrace stopped well short, of course, of calling time on Compton’s career at the highest level after his 16 Tests spread over four years.
Sri Lanka left-arm spinner Rangana Herath, who took a commendable two for 45 in 21 overs on Thursday, said: “We need to bat well in our first innings”.
Woakes suffered from further misfortune soon after tea, with a strong lbw shout against Karunaratne turned down, but the ball was shown to be clipping the top of off-stump on review – though not sufficiently to overturn the decision.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a flat track”, he said.
He then equalled his previous Test-best at Lord’s of 95, made against South Africa in 2012 before a single off Herath saw him to a 160-ball century.
Compton, pressed up to open the batting in England’s second innings because of Alastair Cook’s absence with an injured knee, mustered only 19 before falling caught-behind on his home ground at Lord’s.
England’s energy also extended to Bairstow. He knows that and that batsmen are in the team to score runs.
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“A lot of the games have really good attendances, and it’s probably not a series where you need to do it exactly at this time”, he explained. “It’s one of the great things about Test cricket – sometimes the ball swings conventionally, sometimes it reverses”.
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Harsh as this may sound, the writings clearly on the wall that there has been no proper planning about grooming the future of the nation’s players at grassroots level so they could step up to the global stage when the time was ripe.
