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Sunderland had come into the game with four points out of six from their first two games but were eventually outplayed by Chris Hutchings' men, who have now won two in a row and momentarily go top of the table.

Heskey's opener was controversial, but Roy Keane's men could have no complaints about the two penalty decisions with Denny Landzaat and Antoine Sibierski converting the spot kicks.

Wigan shaded the first-half and deserved their lead at the break with Heskey proving to be a real handful for the Sunderland defence.

However, there was more than a hint of offside about his goal, which he scored in the 18th minute, as he looked to be ahead of the play before swinging in Antonio Valencia's low deflected cross from close range.

He was pulled back for offside twice more on close calls in the first half, while Craig Gordan produced an excellent save to deny the former England man a second with a close range header.

Jason Koumas also had a decent shout for a penalty, but it wasn't all one-way traffic with Sunderland having a couple of decent chances themselves.

Michael Chopra had a free-kick well tipped over by Chris Kirkland and the England keeper did well to then turn away a low Daryl Murphy effort after the Irishman had been put through by Kieran Richardson.

Roy Keane was clearly not happy with his team's performance in the first half and made two changes at half-time with Liam Miller and Danny Collins coming in to try and change things.

They did look lively in the early stages of the second half with a cross from Miller setting-up Ross Wallace for their best early chance but his effort was deflected wide by Andreas Granqvist.

However, the match then turned when Paul McShane had to go off following a clash of heads.

While he was off the pitch, Collins filled in at centre-half but he manhandled Antoine Sibierski in the 62nd minute, and Landzaat then sent Gordon the wrong way from the spot.

McShane would then go off for Russell Anderson, but the Scottish replacement's first real action was to chop down Heskey in the box with Sibierski this time going right down the middle with the spot kick to make it 3-0.

The last 20 minutes was then just a slow death for Sunderland, as Wigan passed the ball around to cries of "ole" from the crowd.

Seán Fay / Eurosport