Australia has won the 5-match ODI series against England by 3-2. In the last match of the series, Australia beat England by 49 runs (Duckworth-Lewis rule) thanks to Travis Head’s all-round performance. This was England’s last series in Test cricket before entering coach Brendon McCullum’s ‘baseball’ style ODI team, but they lost here. Opener Ben Duckett scored a brilliant century for England in the match played in Bristol but Australia’s spinners made a strong comeback in the match, after which Matthew Short’s explosive innings took the team to the brink of victory.
After losing the first two matches of the series badly, England made a strong comeback in the next two matches and leveled the series 2–2. Harry Brook, who was leading the side in the absence of regular skipper Jos Buttler, continued his brilliant performance with the bat and played a brilliant innings for the third consecutive match. Brook scored 72 runs in just 52 balls with the help of 7 sixes and 3 fours. Opener Phil Salt also scored 45 runs off just 27 balls.
But the real star of the England team was left-arm opener Ben Duckett, who scored the second century of his ODI career exactly a year later. Coincidentally, he scored his maiden century in Bristol in September last year. Duckett scored 107 runs in 91 balls with the help of 13 fours and 2 sixes. Together these three took England to 202 runs in just 25 overs. It was only here that the trend of the innings changed and the Australian spinners strengthened their grip. Brook was dismissed for 6 sixes by Adam Zampa and after this Travis Head took 4 wickets to destroy England’s hopes of scoring more than 350 runs. England scored 309 runs in 49.2 overs.
With the start of Australia’s innings, the possibility of rain increased. In such a situation, the Australian batsmen started batting aggressively as soon as they arrived, so that the team remained ahead according to the fixed equation in the deciding situation using the Duckworth-Lewis rule. That’s what happened in the end and its star was Matthew Short. Opener Short, who returned to the team due to captain Mitchell Marsh’s illness, got the team off to an explosive start with a half-century off just 23 balls. Short and Head combined for 78 runs in just 7.1 overs. Head was dismissed for 31 runs and Short was dismissed for 58 runs. After this, Steve Smith and Josh English did not let any more wickets fall and took the team to 165 runs by the 21st over. The match was stopped due to rain in the 21st over and could not be resumed.
