- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Australia might have rolled over England in the Ashes, but it won’t be nearly as easy in the five-match ODI series starting tomorrow. The English have become an elite team with the format’s most destructive batting unit.
Since the 2015 World Cup, which Australia won in a canter, England comfortably have the best win-loss ratio of any team in ODIs, with a 34-15 record. By comparison, Australia’s 26-21 record is only the fifth best, behind England, India, New Zealand and South Africa.
It’s been an extraordinary turnaround for the Poms, who had been a poor ODI team for almost the entirety of the format’s existence.
They were disgraced at the last World Cup – hammered by Australia and New Zealand early on and knocked out in the group stage by Bangladesh – prompting a belated overhaul of their approach to 50-over cricket.
The first major change was naming a new national coach in Trevor Bayliss. The Australian set about modernising the nation’s antiquated tactics and selection strategies, with a heavy emphasis on attack-at-all-costs cricket.
To that point the English had fallen years behind other teams tactically, particularly on the batting front, where their conservative line-up aimed for totals of 270 to 290 in an era when other teams were hunting 330-plus.
Bayliss axed slow scorers like Ian Bell and Gary Ballance and promoted explosive strikers Ben Stokes, Alex Hales and Jason Roy.
[latest_videos_strip category=”cricket” name=”Cricket”]
Rather than playing cautiously to build a platform for a late innings push, they decided instead to start blazing from ball one. The dividends were immediate. In their very first ODI after the World Cup England churned out 9/408 against losing finalists New Zealand.
England have exceeded 300 in almost half of their matches since that tournament and have topped 350 no fewer than nine times, including a phenomenal 3/444 against Pakistan 18 months ago. Jos Buttler and Eoin Morgan finished off that innings with an unbeaten stand of 161 from 72 deliveries.
That pair have been integral to the transformation. Given licence to explore the full depth of his outrageous batting talent, keeper-batsman Buttler has added a rare dynamism to his side. Buttler’s ODI record – an average of 37 at a strike rate of 118 – is all the more extraordinary when you consider that, among batsmen with a minimum of 500 ODI runs, no-one else has ever averaged above 35 while striking at better than 110.
Thanks to his exceptionally fast hands Buttler can easily manufacture boundaries from presentable deliveries. Yet Australia have had his measure in recent times – he’s averaged just 16 at a strike rate of 69 in his past eight ODI innings against them.
Morgan, who has encouraged Buttler to cut loose at every opportunity, will be hoping his man can get over that hump and obliterate Australia.
During his time as English skipper Morgan has earned plaudits not just for his fluid batting but also for the faith he places in his players. He has backed his aggressive batting line-up, giving them the green light to follow the most attacking gameplan ODI cricket has ever seen.
Eoin Morgan (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
Every other ODI team builds periods of consolidation into their batting strategy. Typically this occurs in the middle overs as they seek to cruise along while keeping wickets in hand for an explosion in the final 12 or so overs. England, meanwhile, push the accelerator to the floor from the first over and keep it there.
That is why since the last World Cup no team has come even close to scoring as fast as England’s extraordinary average of 6.3 runs per over. The other four heavyweights of the format – Australia, India, South Africa and New Zealand – have all scored at between 5.72 and 5.85 runs per over in that time.
To highlight what a massive change England have made in their scoring rate, note that they went at just 5.29 runs per over on average across the five years preceding the 2015 World Cup.
Tomorrow is the first time we will see this new and vastly improved ODI batting approach on Australian turf. While the Ashes was frequently boring thanks in equal parts to sleepy pitches and the tourists’ ineptitude, this series promises to overflow with highlights.