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England [397/6] beat Afghanistan [247/8] by 150 runs in the 24th match of the 2019 World Cup

Archer's action is my current favourite in world cricket. So smooth and easy, yet generates express pace.
 
England's bowling is pathetic. Explains why we have been smashing them to all parts. If England didn't have the batting that they do, they'd be competing with Pakistan at the bottom.
 
England were in record-breaking mood at Old Trafford as they produced the best batting display of the World Cup so far.

Having won the toss and opted to bat first against Afghanistan in Manchester, the hosts paced their innings perfectly as Jonny Bairstow’s 90 off 99 balls and Joe Root’s 88 from 82 set the platform for Eoin Morgan to provide the real fireworks.

The skipper produced a true captain’s knock to smash 148 off just 71 deliveries and take his side to 397/6 from their 50 overs.

There were records aplenty tumbling, so we’ve run you through a few of the most eye-opening stats from England’s exhilarating effort.

17: Most individual sixes in an ODI innings

Perhaps the headline record to fall was Morgan setting a new high for the most sixes by any player in an ODI.

The England captain smashed an eye-watering 17 maximums to surpass the record of 16 jointly-held by India’s Rohit Sharma, South Africa’s AB de Villiers and the West Indies’ Chris Gayle.

Seven of those came off Rashid Khan, who had never given up more than two sixes in an ODI before, and he brought up the record with a trademark straight drive that just reached the boundary rope.

25: Most team sixes in an ODI innings

Morgan’s 17 boundary-clearing strokes may have done most of the work but his teammates also chipped in to help England set the record for the most team maximums in an ODI.

Bairstow hammered three, Root struck one and Moeen Ali clubbed four in just nine balls as part of his scintillating 31-run cameo to give the hosts 25 in total.

They beat their own previous record of 24 – set against the West Indies earlier this year – and for context, 25 is three more than they have ever scored in an entire single ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup campaign before.

57 balls: England’s fastest century in an ODI

As his record number of sixes suggest, Morgan wasn’t hanging about at Old Trafford and brought up his century in just 57 balls – the quickest by an Englishman in an ODI.

It was also the fourth-fastest ton by a batsman of any nationality in an ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup match, with Kevin O’Brien’s historic 50-ball hundred in 2011 still the target, and Glenn Maxwell and AB de Villiers also having passed 100 more quickly in 2015.

The effort was all the more remarkable give the 32-year-old scored just one off the first seven balls he faced.

397: England’s highest total at an ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup

They may have fallen three runs short of the fifth 400-plus total accrued at a World Cup but their 397 was still England’s highest score in the history the tournament.

The previous record was only ten days old – the 386/6 they posted against Bangladesh in Cardiff – as the hosts once again demonstrated their firepower with willow in hand.

They may well have Australia’s World Cup-record score of 417/6, accumulated against Afghanistan in Perth four years ago, in their sights before the end of this year’s competition.

5: Most England centuries at an ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup

Morgan’s knock was England’s fifth ton of the competition, extending his country’s record of the most centuries they have hit at a World Cup.

England had never scored more than two hundreds in an edition before but with the skipper adding to Root’s two and one apiece for Jos Buttler and Jason Roy, that record has been blown out of the water this year.

When he fell for 88 off the bowling of Gulbadin Naib, Root was also just 12 runs short of becoming the first English batsman to score three centuries in one World Cup but for the time being remains level with Kevin Pietersen’s mark of two in 2007.

193: Most career ODI sixes for England

Morgan also extended his advantage atop the leaderboard for ODI sixes hit for England, as his 17 maximums took his total to 193.

Buttler is currently his skipper’s nearest challenger, way back on 123, with charismatic all-rounder Andrew Flintoff third on the list with 92.

Morgan’s exploits against Afghanistan also lifted him to sixth on the all-time list for most ODI sixes with 211 (which includes his time representing Ireland) as he leapfrogged De Villiers, Brendon McCullum and Sachin Tendulkar in one fell swoop – not bad for a day’s work.

397: Highest score in an ODI at Old Trafford

Old Trafford isn’t historically a particularly high-scoring ground, as demonstrated by the fact that heading into the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019, Sri Lanka’s 318/7 against England in 2006 was the greatest ODI total at the venue.

But that record has now been broken twice in three days with India racking up 336/5 against Pakistan on Sunday, before England almost immediately smashed that with their 397.

The latest contest was the 49th ODI held at the home of Lancashire, while the score by Morgan’s men has only been surpassed on 42 occasions in 135 years of the Manchester ground hosting Test matches.
 
Manjrekar keeps bringing India into commentary out of nowhere. He's become so overly biased and cringey. Used to like him back in 2004 Indian tour of Pakistan.
 
England was always supposed to win, and they played like a top team, but full credit to Afghanistan for batting out their all 50 overs without losing all wickets and still posting 250 odd runs on the board. I know that team like Pakistan would have collapsed for 150 chasing this total.
 
18 June - Manchester - Afghanistan Captain Gulbadin Naib post-match press conference

Q. Today, batting, the batting department did well but what went with the bowling thing, Rashid conceded more than 100 runs. What was the thing?
GULBADIN NAIB: I feel the game for the start of the day, bowlers did well in like 30 overs. 30 overs, this match, every bowler not only Rashid, and we drop one catch of Morgan I think on 15 or 17 runs. So if he got that time, so maybe they didn't score like this, this match.

So yeah, it's a big side, so they didn't give a single chance.

Q. Are you disappointed with the performance of Rashid? You know, he was in for 11 6s, went for 110 and 9 overs, your main strike bowlers have so much reputation in this tournament.
GULBADIN NAIB: Not that much because Rashid is one of the best spinners now. He's a star player of -- in the overs, especially.

So yeah, it happens, for any player, so not only Rashid. So yeah, everyone knows how Rashid, how is Rashid, so how he bowled, how he bowling. Today, I think today's was not his day, but it's cricket, so sometime you do well, sometime like this kind of stuff.

So I'm happy with him. No, it's not a big deal.

Q. We've seen some reports of an incident last night in a restaurant with the team. Can you tell us?
GULBADIN NAIB: No, no, no. No, I haven't, so you ask with my security officer. So I didn't know anything about him -- about them.

Q. You weren't there?
GULBADIN NAIB: No, no.

Q. From batting point of view, are you satisfied that you posted your highest World Cup total, and also, you batted out full 50 overs for the first time in the tournament. Are these the positives that you take from this game?
GULBADIN NAIB: Yes, we take a lot of positives today. We did do well in every department, so -- so it's a cricket game, so we miss one case of Morgan, so maybe our game, we lost from there.

So like if you see after 30 overs, the score like around 180, 170-something, so after this match, 200 runs, 210 runs all in 20 overs and last ten, they score 140 runs.

So I think credit goes to Morgan, especially, for his batting. So he shows his class. So he's -- I think I've never seen this kind of level, especially of Morgan. So credit goes to them.

Yeah, we take a lot of things from here, so we improving day-by-day in every department, so we trying to do well every day. So now today, we have -- it's a good thing for the team, so we played 50 overs. So I think it's a positive sign.

Also bowlers did well, but sometimes, like especially ask for Rashid, so I think today, not his day. So I'm sure he will become strong.

Q. So could you just clarify, you said that you weren't there last night at the restaurant; we should speak to your security staff. But as a captain, when those type of incidents happen, how does that impact on the team the next day?
GULBADIN NAIB: No, no, I didn't know anything about them. So it's not a big issue for the team for me. So even I didn't know anything about them, so we have like manager and also we have a security officer. So you can ask -- you can ask with them. So we didn't know about anything.

Q. Your security man, can he come up here?
GULBADIN NAIB: Yeah, you cannot -- you ask him -- only with me -- not with security officer. You can talk with other side.

So if anyone you ask this kind of questions, I will go. I will go, yeah.
 
Eoin Morgan keeps a diary that has charted his England team’s progression from the abject lows of the 2015 World Cup to today’s headier times. “It reminds me of how bad things were and how good things are now,” he says.

So what about the entry for Tuesday, June 18, 2019? How about something like this? “Dear diary, we were three runs away from scoring 400, scored more sixes than any team has ever done in an ODI international (25), blasted one of the world’s best ODI bowlers, beat Afghanistan by 150 runs, went back to the top of the World Cup table….oh, and my back wasn’t playing up and I broke a world record!”

Yes, a red-letter day for the England captain. Seventeen sixes blazed off his bat in a spellbinding innings of 148, which included, over the latter part of his 71-ball spell, perhaps the most extraordinary spell of batting carnage ever witnessed at the ICC Men’s World Cup.

Those 17 maximums - eight smashed off his last 16 balls that saw him plunder 60 - were one more than the ODI record shared by three master blasters, AB De Villiers, Rohit Sharma and Chris Gayle, who had hammered his 16 in the last World Cup against Zimbabwe.

Morgan might have been tempted to look back to his diary entry for March 9, 2015 penned in Adelaide after the defeat by Bangladesh that ended England’s wretched World Cup campaign and which included a three-ball duck from the captain.

That was the lowest of the low for him, a day he described as “utterly humiliating”, yet once the director of cricket Andrew Strauss had backed him to remain as captain, it was effectively also the day that helped cement in his mind the idea that root-and-branch (or should that be Root-and-branch) reform was required to transform his England side from makeweights to monsters.

And the remarkable improvements over the past four years that Morgan has overseen seemed, in some strange way, to have been epitomised with the savagery that he led at Old Trafford.

For all the hallmarks of captain Morgan’s trailblazers were there; he had wanted to build a team full of “guys with aggression”, guys who would be coming into their prime in 2019, guys who were not afraid to fail but would always dare to dare.

Here was a fixture that, in previous calamitous World Cups, may have been a ready-made banana skin for England. Ireland 2011, Bangladesh 2015, Afghanistan 2019? After all, destroyer-in-chief Jason Roy was injured and, until he appeared for the toss, nobody could be quite sure Morgan would even be fit to play after the back spasm that forced him off in the win against West Indies.

Yet the 2019 England model was not discombobulated one iota by the injury worries. Jonny Bairstow played the bullying Roy role with aplomb, cracking eight fours and three sixes in his 90, while Joe Root again provided what Morgan calls the glue.

Some glue this. Super-glue, you’d say. Root has this extraordinary capacity to just keep ticking the score along almost invisibly and with barely a memorable stroke in anger so that when you look up, you can’t quite believe that, as he did here, he’s snaffled 88 off 82 balls. Yes, a quicker run rate even than Bairstow.

Root, who hit just one of the ODI record 25 sixes struck, has now accumulated 367 runs in the tournament, more than anyone except than Bangladesh’s superb all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan, and those runs have been accumulated with the risk-free skill and swiftness that enable others to light the fireworks.

Headed by the captain himself this time. The neutrals might have felt some sympathy for poor old Rashid Khan, Afghanistan’s cricketing icon, whose usually dangerous, zipped leggies were mauled for a record 11 sixes, but Morgan was brutally unforgiving.

It might have been so different had Dawlat Zadran not made the most horrendous hash of trying to catch him on the midwicket boundary off Rashid’s bowling when he was on 28.

Seven Morgan sixes later, the confidence of the Afghans’ marquee player was shot. Fortunately for him, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, the day’s honoured guest, had left Old Trafford by then.

Yet what a show Morgan put on. Eight sixes deposited in the region between backward square and midwicket from anything fractionally short, three more clubbed over long on, four straight beauties - one so towering it hit the edge of press box roof - and a couple more over long off. Quite unforgettable. One for the diary all right…
 
England's bowling is pathetic. Explains why we have been smashing them to all parts. If England didn't have the batting that they do, they'd be competing with Pakistan at the bottom.

But they do, don’t they?

Wood and Archer are the two fastest bowlers in the tournament, each with 21 wickets so far.
 
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