IND 147/7
ENG 148/3
England win by 7 wickets
They waited, and waited, and waited, and finally England's bowlers had the chance to spearhead a victory on this tour. True, none of them picked up more than two wickets, but that only established how good they were as a unit. India were kept to a measly 147 on a pitch that wasn't in any way untoward and as icing on the cake Eoin Morgan shellacked a half-century to make sure his team took a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
Tymal Mills, Chris Jordan, Liam Plunkett and Ben Stokes were given a brief to bowl length and just short of it, while ensuring the batsmen do not have room to use their pace to relieve the pressure. Moeen Ali was at his restrictive best, picking up 2 for 21 in four overs, targeting the stumps with flat darts and in the end the services of their specialist spinner Adil Rashid was not even needed.
India, who had lost the toss and were put in, seemed rather obsessed with power-hitting. They had gone through the entire World T20 playing proper cricket, only to be brutally swept aside by West Indies in the semi-final. From the moment Virat Kohli carved the third ball of the match for four through point, it seemed like they were trying go for the boundary every single ball. It did not pay off though, as England dashed a little bit of the Republic Day celebrations at a jam-packed Green Park stadium in Kanpur.
Admittedly, it doesn't seem the worst strategy to leave your brain behind as a batsman when playing T20. There's 10 wickets to negotiate 20 overs, and while batting first, it even seems logical to do so. But India don't normally play in this fashion and will need time to catch up with the rest of the world. This evening, for example, they couldn't deal with how they were bleeding wickets, at the worst possible times.
Kohli and KL Rahul, who opened the batting, fell within three overs of each other on either side of the Powerplay. Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and Manish Pandey - Nos 3, 4 and 6 - dismissed within three overs as well, between the 11th and the 14th. India couldn't lay a good enough foundation at the start and were running out of batsmen by the end. No one made it past a score of 36.
The key for England was in how well they read the pitch. It was both grassy and cracked and lent itself to fast bowlers who were willing to hit the deck and also experiment with cross-seamers and slower balls. Jordan and Mills - who were playing their first matches on this tour - did exactly that. Then Moeen, who began his spell having Kohli caught at short midwicket for 29 off 26, excelled in the middle overs, bowling stump-to-stump. His length was lovely as well, not full enough to drive freely and not short enough that the batsman could use the pace. The end result, he conceded only one boundary.
India had somehow mis-hit their way to 47 in the Powerplay, but once England had the comfort of having five men on the boundary, the edges no longer found gaps. They offered a mere 37 runs between the 13th and 19th overs. Moeen had created the pressure, the quicks came back, knowing they will be targeted, but by varying their pace and banging the ball into the pitch without the width to cut or pull, they gave India, who were by now only trying to hit the ball as hard as they could, very few options.
Hardik Pandya found that out when he was cramped by a a short ball rising up to his shoulder and found deep point; Mills meanwhile had his first T20I wicket. Rahul was caught unawares by a sharp bouncer from Jordan in the fourth over, which he could only fend to short fine leg.
Yuvraj top-edged a pull to long leg off Plunkett and Raina was bowled by a searing yorker from Stokes. Morgan's captaincy should be credited here, forcing the two left-handers to deal with the kind of bowling they generally dislike facing, and less so with an innings in jeopardy: fast and at their bodies. Moeen played his part too, spinning the ball away or making it skid on, rarely letting himself be lined up. MS Dhoni managed to stick it out till the end, hitting a couple of fours in the last over, but 147 was nowhere near par.
It showed when Jason Roy and Sam Billings blitzed 36 in three overs at the start of the chase. India did put a stop to the mayhem in the next over with legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal, picked ahead of Amit Mishra, bowling both batsmen. But it didn't matter in the larger scheme of things since England managed to gun down a third of their target within the first six overs. With that in the back of their minds, Joe Root, returning from a niggle, and Morgan put on 83 runs for the third wicket and that partnership was more than enough to seal a straightforward chase. A further sign of how disappointing India's batting had been on the day was debutant Parvez Rasool picking up the England captain for 51 and barely celebrating. He knew it just didn't matter.
Australia 369/7 (50.0 ov)
Pakistan 312 (49.1 ov)
Australia won by 57 runs
What a way to celebrate Australia Day. David Warner and Travis Head gave the Adelaide Oval crowd special reason to enjoy the national holiday by rewriting the record books and compiling the all-time highest ODI partnership for Australia, a 284-run stand that set up a hefty win over Pakistan in the final match of the series. For a dead rubber, this game had plenty of bounce - at least, while Australia were batting.
Their 7 for 369 meant Pakistan would have required the third-highest successful chase in ODI history if they were to emerge with a consolation win; it was simply too big a task, despite a century from Babar Azam and a typically entertaining 79 from Sharjeel Khan. Although Pakistan managed their highest total of the series - 312 - they still suffered a 57-run defeat, and will fly home with a 1-4 ODI series loss to sit alongside their 0-3 result in the Tests.
Perhaps the only disappointment for the crowd was that Warner did not turn his 179 into a double-century. It was Warner's 13th one-day international hundred, but the local spectators equally appreciated the maiden century from Head, the South Australia captain now making his way in the national side. Promoted to open with Warner for the second time in the series - Usman Khawaja was left out of this XI - Head finished with 128 off 137 balls.
Further records could have been broken had Warner stuck around a little longer. Although they set a new Australian ODI partnership record - beating the 260-run second-wicket stand between Warner and Steven Smith against Afghanistan in the 2015 World Cup - the all-time ODI opening partnership record eluded them by two runs. That remains the 286-run stand between Sanath Jayasuriya and Upul Tharanga for Sri Lanka against England in 2006.
And Warner fell six runs short of equalling the highest individual ODI score by an Australian, the unbeaten 185 that Shane Watson plundered against Bangladesh in 2011. Towards the end of his 128-ball innings, Warner appeared to be struggling with cramp, and finally fell to a slower short ball from Junaid Khan that was slashed away to point, where Azam took a good catch low to the ground.
Remarkably, though Pakistan had gone 41 overs without taking a wicket, they claimed another one only two balls later, when Smith skied his second delivery off Junaid and was well taken by Wahab Riaz, who ran with the flight of the ball from mid-on and jarred his knee while landing. At least those chances stuck for Pakistan - the same cannot be said of much of their fielding on this tour, and fielding coach Steve Rixon might have to go back to square one.
How different might this result have been had Warner been caught on the first ball of the match, when his edge off a Mohammad Amir outswinger flew through the left hand of Azhar Ali at second slip? Warner was dropped again on 130, when Amir put down a sitter himself. Pakistan did take some catches in the final 10 overs - six of them, in fact - but they had given Australia a head start from which they could not recover.
The final 10 overs netted Australia exactly 100 runs, but this innings was set up by the openers. Without once clearing the boundary, Warner sprinted to a half-century from 34 balls - his quickest in ODIs - and then struck his first two sixes in one Mohammad Hafeez over. He continued at a similar tempo while Head played a more watchful innings, and it became a race: would Head reach his half-century before Warner got to a hundred? The answer was no.
Such was the disparity in scoring rates that both Warner and Head brought up their milestones from their respective 78th deliveries - that is, Warner's hundred and Head's fifty. It was Warner's fastest ODI century by a distance, for although he has blasted a Test ton in 69 balls, before this match his quickest in ODI cricket was a comparatively languid 92 deliveries. This time, a double-century seemed on offer, and indeed he increased his speed to bring up his 150 from 107 balls.
Warner scored his runs all around the wicket - an almost even split of off-side and leg-side scoring. He struck 19 fours and five sixes before his innings finally ended. In the previous over, Head had brought up his first ODI century from his 121st delivery. He was especially strong in front of the wicket and struck nine fours and three sixes, before he skied a catch off Hasan Ali in the 47th over. Hasan would go on to raise a hundred of his own - 2 for 100 from his nine overs.
Facing such a chase, Pakistan needed everything to go right. The loss of Azhar - lbw to a Mitchell Starc inswinger in the third over - was a bad start. But Sharjeel and Azam gave Pakistan hope with a 130-run second-wicket stand that frustrated the Australians. Sharjeel continued his upward trend in this series: scores of 18, 29, 50 and 74 were followed this time by 79 from 69 balls, including two sixes, but a top-edged hook off Starc ended his run.
Starc was always a danger, and added the wicket of Hafeez, before Shoaib Malik retired hurt on 10 having copped a Pat Cummins short ball on the forearm. Azam completed his fourth ODI hundred but went no further, caught off a leading edge off Josh Hazlewood for 100 from 109 balls. When Umar Akmal fell for a brisk 46, the required run-rate had ballooned to more than 15.
The result was wrapped up by the sight of Starc rattling the stumps of Wahab Riaz to finish with 4 for 42. It was a fine effort, but there was no question that Warner had been the dominant force in this match. And now, he rests from next week's Chappell-Hadlee Series in New Zealand, already with six ODI hundreds for the season. What a way to finish his Southern Hemisphere summer.
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