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England was in no mood for jokes as they easily beat Australia by 4 wickets in the second one day international at the Wooolloongabba, Brisbane.
It seems that Australia’s domination of the test match series will be countered by England’s domination of ODI series.
England won the toss and sent Australia into bat. The Aussies posted 270/9, but that score did not seem to be much of a problem to the English side as they chased down the target with a little more than five overs to spare and took a 0-2 lead in the series.
Despite Australian opener Aaron Finch, who made 106 runs, England’s test captain Joe Root was named man of the match for his bowling figures of 31/2 and scoring 46 not out in the chase.
Root said that he did expect to bowl but enjoyed it when captain Eoin Morgan tossed him the ball.
“Enjoyable today, did not think I would bowl seven overs at the start of the day.”
“Whenever you come off a series loss you want to prove a point, and leading into the World Cup we want to set a benchmark. We had to stay cool in the moment and get the job done,” Root said.
After a clinical domination in the test matches, where the Aussies reclaimed the Ashes 4-0, captain Steve Smith said that they are not playing good enough one day cricket.
“We are not playing good one day cricket at the moment. It’s a quality England batting line up. We lost a couple of wickets in a row and we could not get that power going at the back end to get that 320 [target] we were after.”
The Aussies started the batting well with David Warner and Finch putting on a first wicket partnership of 68 runs, before Warner lost his wicket to Moeen Ali for 35.
Finch went on to make his 10 hundred of his ODI career, but eventually lost his wicket to Liam Plunkett in the 41 over when Australia were looking to cash in.
“Our bowlers were exceptional. They put pressure on the Australian batsmen. We did enough to win but it was far from a complete performance, which is exciting for us,” said Morgan.
“We have a level of trust and confidence in the group that someone will put their hands up for us,” he added.
Australia will be looking to bounce back in the third ODI on Sunday at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The match will start at 5:30am (South African time).
