England look to scale Mt 500
After registering the highest ODI total, Morgan stated his side wants to set a new high
NOTTINGHAM: England one-day captain Eoin Morgan said “the sky’s the limit” for his recordbreaking side, with a total of 500 firmly in their sights after their rout of Australia.
Morgan’s men posted a new all-time ODI record of 481 for six at Trent Bridge en route to a 242run thrashing of their arch-rivals to go an unbeatable 3-0 up in the five-match series.
Man-of-the-match Alex Hales top-scored with 147 on his Nottinghamshire home ground, just as he had done when making 171 in England’s 444 for three — the previous ODI record total — against Pakistan at Trent Bridge two years ago.
Opening batsman Jonny Bairstow made 139 on Tuesday, his fourth hundred in six ODIS that included a century in a shock loss to Scotland just before this series.
Meanwhile Morgan, who missed the second ODI in Cardiff on Sunday with a back spasm, smashed England’s fastest fifty at this level, off just 21 balls.
“I think (we’re) definitely very close (to 500),” said Morgan.
“In the position we found ourselves today, with six overs to go, we’d have never imagined — certainly after that game against Pakistan — that we’d come close, pass, maybe stare down the barrel of scoring 500.”
“The sky’s the limit with these guys,” Morgan added after England, the 2019 World Cup hosts, cemented their place at the top of the ODI rankings in style. England might well have broken the 500-barrier had they not lost both Hales and Morgan, who put on 124 for the fourth wicket, off successive balls in the 48th over.
“When ‘Morgs’ came out, he said ‘If we’re ever going to (get 500), now’s the time’ -- but we didn’t quite get there,” Hales told Sky Sports.
Brief scores: England 481/6 (A Hales 147, J Bairstow 139, J Roy 82, E Morgan 67, J Richardson 3/92) beat Ausrtalia 239 (T Head 51, M Stoinis 44; A Rashid 4/47, M Ali 3/28)
LANGER HOPES SIDE WILL GET BETTER
NOTTINGHAM:AUSTRALIA coach Justin Langer hopes his side will be better for a “brutal” and recordbreaking defeat by England in the third ODI in Nottingham that was “nothing like” anything he had ever seen before.
“It’s a shock,” said a stunned Langer. “That is literally England at its best. It’s no fluke that they are No.1 in the world.
“I’ve never seen nothing like that. I was in Johannesburg when Australia got 400 and South Africa then got it, but that was just brutal,” he added.
“Hopefully our young guys can learn from it — it doesn’t get harder than that.”
MY HARDEST DAY IN LIFE: PAINE
Terming the loss to England as the ‘hardest day of cricket I’ve ever had’, Australia captain Tim Paine hopes that his bowlers learn from the contest wherein the hosts set a new world record.
Paine told media after the game, “We have a really inexperienced attack and we would be foolish not to go through it and learn from it. But the best place for these guys to learn is on the job. As bad as it seems and it feels right now, this can be a really big positive for us going forward, that we have gone through a day like this and the guys realise we get another crack at England in two days’ time.”