Australia Hand England Their First ODI Series Defeat Since 2015

Australia played fantastic cricket in the third and final game of the 3 match ODI series to hand England their first ODI series loss on home soil since 2015. This loss has shown the ICC Cricket World Champions areas that they need to work on and fix in order to continue being a dominant ODI team.

England did well given the fact that they did not have their most valuable player as Ben Stokes made himself unavailable due to family commitments. All three games in the series were closely contested games which showed that the two sides were pretty evenly matched.

Australia won the first ODI by 19 runs and England bounced back in the second ODI to win by 24 runs. The two sides went into the third ODI game at Manchester knowing that the series was on the line.

England & Wales Cricket Board

Bairstow Takes England Past 300

England batted first and was immediately in trouble after they lost Jason Roy and Joe Root in quick succession. However, Jonny Bairstow steadied the ship and made an impressive century scoring 112 of 126 balls. He formed partnerships with Sam Billings (57) and Chris Woakes (53) that would eventually help England to reach 302.

Credit must be given to the Aussies for pulling things back as Mitchell Marsh and Glenn Maxwell sent down a combined 10 overs and conceded just 48 runs. The Poms would have liked more runs but they lost their captain Eoin Morgan (23) just as he was getting set and then the dangerous Jos Butler fell for just 8.

Maxwell and Carey Rescue Australia

England had the Aussies on the ropes as they picked up wickets at regular intervals and had Australia at 73-5. Glenn Maxwell who has been in fantastic form all series took charge of the innings and wicket-keeper Alex Carey gave him good company. The two put together a 212 run partnership that took the game away from England and brought them very close to victory.

Maxwell ended up scoring 108 from just 90 balls at a strike rate of 120 while Carey finished with 106 from 114 balls. England had a glimmer of hope once both of them were back in the pavilion but Mitchell Starc used the long handle and hit 11 runs of just 3 balls to take Australia to victory with 2 balls to spare.

Most of the players from both squads will now fly to the UAE to take part in the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL).