Head seals Aussie day
RECALLED opener Travis Head fell just shy of a century as Australia downed England by three wickets on Friday night to avert a one-day series whitewash.
Chasing England’s meagre 196, Head made 96 as Australia won with 13 overs to spare at Adelaide Oval in the fourth one-dayer of the series.
The result leaves the series 3-1 in England’s favour ahead of the last game on Sunday in Perth and denies the tourists their first clean sweep of a ODI series in Australia.
Head underpinned Australia’s 7-197, the chase coming after pacemen Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins produced a record bowling start, reducing England to 5-8.
Cummins claimed careerbest ODI figures of 4-24 and Hazlewood (3-39) took his wickets in his initial four overs – England crashed to 5-8 after 6.2 overs. Australia’s previous best ODI bowling start, with the caveat of dismissing half the opposition, was 5-17 against minnows Kenya in 2002 and Zimbabwe in 2004.
At 5-8, England had recorded the third-worst ODI batting start – bettering only Sri Lanka’s 5-6 against Bangladesh in 2009 and Canada’s 5-7 against the Netherlands in 2013.
Four of England’s top-six batsmen made ducks and the tourists didn’t hit a boundary until the 15th over.
But English allrounder Chris Woakes ensured some respectability, smacking five sixes and top-scoring with 78 from 82 balls, though the visitors were all out in 44.5 overs.
Head, recalled to the Australian side to open the batting because of Aaron Finch’s hamstring injury, steered the run chase with aplomb.
That was even after the early loss of David Warner.