Morgan’s men target whitewash before stiffer test against India

England should enjoy this one-day international series against Australia so long as it lasts. After the fifth and final game at Old Trafford, their threematch series against India is bound to be far less of a free-hitting ball game and far more akin to the knockout stages of next year’s World Cup.

Australia are World Cup holders in name alone. Only Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell were in the side that defeated New Zealand in the World Cup final of 2015 – and Finch has been played out of position in half this series while Maxwell was injured for the last game. Today England can make hay one last time before they face bowlers who know what they are doing in the 50-over format and batsmen who churn out big hundreds; and if they do so, it will be only their second clean sweep in a five-match series, after that against Zimbabwe in 2001.

In the fourth ODI Joe Root bowled his 10-over allotment of flat, round-the-wicket off-spin and darts straight through for only 44 runs. That has never happened before and it is not going to happen against India or in the World Cup knockout stages. Root should have been man of the match, for his bowling, because Australia’s oh-so-conventional batting against him limited England’s target to 311, a stroll in the park by the standards being set this season.

Finch and Shaun Marsh were so old- fashioned that they did not sweep anything unless the ball pitched outside leg stump and was going down leg side. No wonder Australia have lost 15 of their past 17 completed ODIs: their style is as antiquated as England’s was in the last World Cup. The tourists walk out to bat with a top hat and a tie wrapped round their waists for a belt, and no gloves, like 19th-century players – but they will be back.

It is the opening partnership between Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow which has enabled England to add a cubit to their stature since their defeat by Scotland and to extend the frontiers of 50-over run-scoring. Roy and Alex Hales were never consistent as an opening pair: one or other would fire. Roy and Bairstow are matching each other stroke for stroke. Already, in a year, they have recorded five century opening stands, whereas Roy and Hales had made only three.

Roy’s surge dates from the first ODI of this series after he had played across the line to his second ball at the Oval from Billy Stanlake that jagged back. Bringing his hands in tighter, playing straighter, waiting for the ball to come, Roy has since scored 120 with an opening stand of 63 in Cardiff; 82 in a stand of 159 at Trent Bridge; and 101 in a stand of 174 at Chester-le-Street. These partnerships have all come at faster than a run a ball, almost a shot a ball, and shredded whatever plans the Australians may have had, allowing England’s strikers – Hales, Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler – to demolish the leftovers.

Almost as encouraging in the fourth ODI was the reverse-swing which Mark Wood and David Willey discovered in the final overs, so that the foundation conventionally laid by Finch and Marsh was never built on.

There had been hardly a semblance of reverse-swing in the first three games, hence England’s record-breaking total of 481 at Trent Bridge, but there was at Chester-le-Street and the abrasive surface at Old Trafford should offer bowlers some more respite from the unprecedented and unrelenting onslaught which batting against a white ball has become.