Last Updated on 5 years by Charbel Coorey
When the bowlers bat like that, it makes the captain look good: Eoin Morgan | Eoin Morgan praises lower order batsmen for giving England a score to defend
England made a swift comeback in yesterday’s ODI against the Australian side to safely secure a victory in the three-match series. After being restricted to a total of 231 runs whilst batting first, the Aaron Finch-led side was cruising before the Englishmen completely derailed the chase through some clinical bowling as the game progressed.
Eoin Morgan’s team’s top-order couldn’t muster any significant total and hence it was later down to the bowlers to do the batting and take the team to a respectable score.
The trio of Chris Woakes, Tom Curran, and Adil Rashid accounted for 98 runs after batting in the late part of the innings. “[Fun?] Yeah, definitely it. It’s a confidence-booster for myself and the team. When the bowlers bat like that, it makes the captain look good,” Morgan said in the post-match interview.
To stifle the Australian chase, England’s pacers maintained incredible discipline throughout the 48.4 overs. The strike bowling trio of Tom Curran, Chris Woakes, and Jofra Archer completed their quota of 10 overs at an economy rate of less than 3.50 each, which is a remarkable feat in modern-day limited-overs cricket.
Captain Morgan addressed the same and mentioned, “But that was as well as we’ve bowled for a while. It reversed a little bit, went up and down… full credit to the guys collectively. [All-in with Woakes/Archer] It was the only way we were going to win the game. It was like your stack is going low and you need to go in pretty soon if you want something to happen. The bowlers made us look good, particularly when Jof and Woakesy came back against Labuschagne and Finchy.”
The Aussies merely required 92 runs in around 19 overs whilst having eight wickets in hand to seal the series. However, an embarrassing collapse caused by some brilliant bowling by the English bowlers prevented them from surpassing the total. Sam Curran’s role shouldn’t go unnoticed, considering that he dismissed the lower-order trio of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Adam Zampa in quick succession to avert any late comeback by the visitors.
Written by Anjali Jha. Follow Anjali on Twitter today.
