England amasses a good total in the fourth ODI against Australia
England piled up a good total against Australia in the fourth match of the seven-match one-day international (ODI) series after batting first at Adelaide.
The English captain Andrew Strauss continued his good run of form with the toss, as he won the toss for the fourth consecutive time against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 in the ODI series. He will be hoping to win the match today in order to save the series as the hosts are
already 3-0 up in the series.
Strauss elected to bat first as the wicket was perfect for batting. The English captain wasn’t able to give a solid start to his team and was out early after just scoring eight runs off 10 balls. The veteran English wicketkeeper batsman, Matt Prior was under
a lot pf pressure after his two consecutive ducks in the last two ODIs. He was brought into the team ahead of Steve Davies but the decision didn’t work in favour of the visitors.
However, Prior was determined to score runs and he didn’t disappoint the selectors today. He batted well and put together a solid 113-run partnership for the second wicket with Jonathan Trott. The latter was unbeaten on 84 in the last match but was unfortunate
to miss out on a century as he ran out of partners. This time he made sure that he took his team to a respectable total.
Prior scored a quick half century before getting out. He amassed 67 runs off 58 balls in his innings. The wicket of Prior yet again saw the visitors middle-order collapse, as Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell failed to capitalise on the good start from the top-order
batsmen.
The in-form Trott didn’t lose focus with the fall of a few quick wickets and reached his century. He was out after scoring 102 runs off 126 balls. He became the first player for England to score a century in the ongoing ODI series. Eoin Morgan and Paul Collingwood
both got starts but failed to bat out the complete overs and this slowed the scoring-rate to some extent. However, the fighting all-rounder, Michael Yardy made sure that his team got closer to 300. Yardy scored an unbeaten 39 off 27 balls to take the total
to 299.
There wasn’t much for the fast-bowlers in the wicket but the spinners did the damage for Australia. The ball was taking a lot of turn and David Hussey took full advantage of that. He took four wickets in the match and Steve Smith grabbed three wickets. The
amount of spin offered by the track will be encouraging for the English spinners, and the team will miss their leading spinner Graeme Swann.
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