Angelo Mathews has insisted that Sri Lanka retained the spirit of cricket when dismissing Jos Buttler to help win the series decider against England on Tuesday.

The Lions were victors by six wickets at Edgbaston to clinch the one-day international series 3-2.

They restricted England to a below-par total of 219 all out, partly thanks to Sachithra Senanayake's controversial running out of Buttler at the non-strikers' end, while the wicket-keeper was backing up.

Mathews was given the chance by the on-field umpires to withdraw his side's appeal, but the Sri Lanka captain feels that they had given Buttler a suitable number of warnings to stop taking "unfair starts".

"He was taking unfair starts not only in this game but in the last game as well," he told Sky Sports News.

"So we gave him two warnings in the spirit of cricket, because I don't know how to stop a batsman from doing that continuously. So we had to go for it.

"I would probably stick by [the decision] because it was completely within the rules and in the spirit of cricket we gave him two warnings for not only this game but the last game as well. So we had to go for it."

England skipper Alastair Cook has said that he was "disappointed" by Mathews's role in the dismissal of Buttler, who was on 21 at the time and on the back of a record-breaking century in the previous game.