It was not quite the suave 007 performance but England have shown life to deny Australia a series whitewash.
England denied Australia the opportunity to win the ODI NatWest Series 7-0, and thereby, deprived them the top spot on the ICC’s ODI rankings, which will now see Australia drop to third place behind South Africa and India.
It was an extraordinary day for England because they showed more fight, more gumption that England captain Andrew Strauss had been pleading for all through the series. But while their bowling was a great comeback effort, they needed to keep their cool after the middle order lost way despite the openers’ stand.
Really England need not have made such a heavy weather of their run chase, given that they were given a brilliant opening stand by skipper Strauss and Joe Denly. Strauss’ forty-seven runs and Denly’s second ODI half century, should have sealed the deal at 106 runs in twenty overs.
But England suffered a wobbly middle order disorder as they lost five wickets for thirty-three runs. England managed it in the end with the comfort of plenty of overs to beat (ten to be precise) and by holding their nerves, especially with Paul Collingwood at the crease.
Earlier in the day, Graeme Swann pulled off a gem of a spell where his ten overs yielded twenty-eight runs but ran Australia aground with five wickets. Australia’s total of 176 was anti climatic given the seventy-nine runs between Australian captain, Ricky Ponting (half century), and deputy Michael Clarke (thirty eight runs).
A further forty-nine from Michael Hussey pushed the total along before it all came to a grinding end, the wins and the scoring.
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