MANCHESTER, United Kingdom (AFP)— Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva won the toss and elected to bat against England in the first Test at Old Trafford on Wednesday.

A straw coloured pitch looked to be a good surface for the batsmen but increasingly cloudy skies above the Manchester ground also offered the promise of assistance for England’s quicks.

“The pitch looks quite dry but the conditions are better than what we’ve had over the past few days,” said De Silva, looking to lead Sri Lanka to just their fourth win in 19 Tests in England, at the toss.

“We know the conditions now, we are ready for this.”

Stand-in England captain Ollie Pope, leading his country for the first time after regular captain Ben Stokes was ruled out with a torn hamstring, added: “It’s a big honour. It’s a shame for Stokesy, but something I’m really proud of.

“I think we were probably going to have a bowl first, but it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good pitch, at least for the first half of the game. It looks rock hard, so hopefully it has some pace early on.”

Both sides had already named their team for the opening match of this three-Test series.

Fast bowler Matthew Potts was recalled to take Stokes’s place, with England forced into another change from the team that completed a 3-0 rout of the West Indies after opener Zak Crawley was sidelined with a broken finger.

Dan Lawrence, in his first Test for more than two years, replaces Crawley at the top of the order even though the 27-year-old is not a specialist opening batsman.

Sri Lanka, in their first Test series in England for eight years and with just a solitary warm-up match behind them on tour — a defeat by the second-string England Lions — gave a debut to fast bowler Milan Rathnayake.

Teams

England: Dan Lawrence, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (capt), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith (wkt), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Matthew Potts, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir

Sri Lanka: Dimuth Karunaratne, Nishan Madushka, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dhananjaya de Silva (capt), Dinesh Chandimal (wkt), Kamindu Mendis, Prabath Jayasuriya, Milan Rathnayake, Asitha Fernando, Vishwa Fernando

Umpires: Paul Reiffel (AUS), Joe Wilson (WIS)

Tv umpire: Chris Gaffaney (NZL)

Match referee: David Boon (AUS)