England at the moment is playing a brand of cricket which isn’t normally associated with them. The sheer ruthless aggression put on display against world champions Australia will definitely strike a chill down the spines of the other teams.
Not many teams around have managed to embarrass Australia like the way England just did at Birmingham to top Group A with three wins and also send out Australia from their ICC Champions Trophy 2017 campaign. The win also means that Bangladesh has gone through to the semi-finals and is bound to be a historic occasion in Bangladesh.
The bowlers set it up for England initially as Australia’s batting was restricted to an under par 277-9 on board. In reply, England got off to a shaky start, losing their top three with just 35 on board. From there on, skipper Eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes took off on a mission and the sheer counter attack caught Australia off guard. Thanks to Stokes’ century, England eventually won by 40 runs on the DLS method.
Post the dominating victory, skipper Eoin Morgan heaped praises on his side for maintaining the momentum.
“Things have gone pretty well, we’ve been lucky,” said Morgan. “We’ve found form and the guys performing makes us happy. Yeah, the bowling has done a good job. We took Australia from a commanding position to one where we thought was an easy chase or a below par chase. To get them down from there was outstanding.”
“Adil Rashid bowled in the last ten overs, something he hasn’t done lately. He is growing in confidence and it is glad to see. It is hard work getting high-quality batsmen out; Mark (Wood) seems to have found some form. Either side we face are going to be tough as was proved yesterday with Bangladesh turning New Zealand over,” Morgan added.
Morgan concluded by mentioning that his team need to persist with high-quality cricket.
“We need to play high-quality cricket that is required. Hopefully, we’d be able to produce something near the standards. We just talked about wrestling back the momentum and building a partnership. It was a good wicket and they bowled well in getting us three down,” said Morgan.