AISLE BE IN TOP FORM

Liam reveals he trained on a baseball pitch while planning wedding in USA

HOW do you prepare for an England one-day tour in Sri Lanka if you are spending six weeks in the USA planning your wedding?

For Liam Plunkett it was a case of heading down to the local indoor baseball arena to bowl at a life-size mannequin.

He has been a mainstay of the ODI side, but was forced to miss the first three games of this series owing to his marriage to long-term partner and Pennsylvanian local Emeleah.

A late switch of England’s tour itinerary moved the limited-over fixtures to the start of the trip, the same time that Plunkett (right) had invited 75 American guests to fly over for his big day in the Cotswolds.

So, while he was spending time over in West Chester he took six cricket balls, found some stumps and marked out a 22-yard pitch in a baseball diamond and got to work.

Plunkett said: “It was a big enough area to get my full run-up in and, with the mannequins pretty much resembling a batter shaping to hit you out of the park, I got my overs in. I got the rolling measuring wheel for the right pitch length, they were looking at me weirdly, but I had to do it. If I had known that facility was available I would have been doing that the last 10 years every time I went there.

“I didn’t want to come to Sri Lanka and be out of shape. I took six new white balls, I got some stumps and I could practise my skills and my yorkers. It’s about getting your overs up, and I bowled about 40 per week.” With a few county team-mates as guests, Plunkett admitted the wedding last Saturday was punctuated with updates on England’s second ODI, before he and his new wife arrived on Tuesday for one of the more unusual honeymoons.

“I got married and couldn’t just say, “Cheers thanks for being my wife! See you in a month’,” he added. “It’s nice that she gets to come out, she’s doing her own thing while we train and I’m glad to be here.”

AUSTRALIA were thrashed by 373 runs in Abu Dhabi to lose their twomatch Test series 1-0 to Pakistan. Mohammed Abbas took 5-62 – and 10 wickets in the match – as the Aussies were dismissed for 164 chasing 538.