There’s been a lot of negativity around England’s white-ball performances in recent years, and much of it has been deserved. <\/p>\n
Their 50-over World Cup defence ended in a dismal group exit in India in 2023 and they failed to win a match at this year’s Champions Trophy, which proved to be the final straw for Buttler’s captaincy. <\/p>\n
Although they reached the semi-finals of the 2024 T20 World Cup, the manner of their exit – bowled out for 103 by eventual champions India – was uninspiring.<\/p>\n
Away from tournaments, they’ve lost five of their past six ODI series, including a 2-1 defeat against South Africa earlier this month. Their victory in Southampton came with the series already lost. <\/p>\n
And after losing by 14 runs in Cardiff on Wednesday, albeit in a farcical rain-affected encounter, they arrived in Manchester once again in must-win territory. <\/p>\n
England responded with style, providing plenty of cheer to warm the crowd on a chilly September evening and plenty of positives for Brendon McCullum. <\/p>\n
Their batters, for example, dismantled what is, on paper, a high-quality bowling attack, with each member of the top four scoring valuable runs. It’s worth remembering, they also have Ben Duckett and Jamie Smith to call on. <\/p>\n
With the ball, Archer, who missed out on Wednesday due to the wet conditions, was among the wickets, showcasing all of his variations and his faith in his body with a sharp caught and bowled. Curran, in just his second outing since his recall, bagged two of his own. <\/p>\n
One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but here England were entertaining and undeniably brilliant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s been a lot of negativity around England’s white-ball performances in recent years, and much of it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-133280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}