England quick: Our tri-series batting line-up ‘phenomenal’

Cricket

England are backing their “phenomenal” batting lineup to continue playing with aggression after losing to Australia in their first match of the Twenty20 tri-series.

Eoin Morgan’s side were unable to build a substantial partnership as Glenn Maxwell (103 not out) powered the hosts to a five-wicket victory in Hobart on Wednesday night. England were left to regret a string of soft dismissals with Dawid Malan (50) the only significant run-scorer. Australia chased down their target of 156 with nine balls to spare.

The sides will meet again tonight at the MCG with England paceman Chris Jordan confident of a better showing from the likes of Jason Roy, Alex Hales and Jos Buttler.

“Our batting lineup is phenomenal,” he said. “We do play a positive brand of cricket, we do play an aggressive brand of cricket. We try to take the positive option as much as possible.

“Those things happen sometimes but I think over a period of time, we’ll have more success than failure.

“Even with that batting collapse, we still managed to put up 156 and make it a competitive total. Imagine when we are going and we don’t get a collapse — maybe we will end up with 200, 210.”

Seventh in the ICC T20 rankings, Australia have made a perfect start to the tri-series with victories over fourth-ranked England and second-ranked New Zealand.

They have achieved that despite stand-in captain David Warner being in something of a white-ball form slump which began during Australia’s 4-1 ODI series loss to England.

“A big knock might be around the corner but the whole Australian team is very talented so we’re not really concentrating on one player.”

“We have our plans in place, and every time we come up against them we’ll be trying to execute them.”