It was absolute carnage at Nottingham as England created history by registering the highest ever score in ODI cricket. Hales and Jason Roy started off the proceedings with a bang. From the very first ball both the batsman stuck to their natural game and started taking on the bowlers. But Jason Roy couldn’t last long as he mistimed a pull which lobbed off the glove into Sarfraz’s hands. Pakistan drew first blood in the 6th over.
In came Joe Root who is in a form of his life. Joe Root’s class and Hales destruction combined to leave Pakistan in tatters. Hales played some classy drives through covers,stepped down the track and lofted the spinners while Root kept on rotating the strike. After notching up his fourth ODI ton Hales shifted gears and started scoring runs at a brisk pace.Root on the other side was giving strike as much as possible to Hales and the two were piling on runs as misery continued for Pakistan. In the mean time Hales broke the record of highest ODI score (171) for an English cricketer. Just after reaching the milestone he was adjudged LBW off Hasan Ali. Root too departed after making a well made 85.
Buttler and skipper Morgan combined and made batting look easy. The destructive pair stitched a 150 run partnership in just 65 deliveries. Buttler and Morgan were dealing in sixes against some mediocre bowling. Even their best bowlers Amir and Wahab were struck all over the place. Records kept on piling as England recorded the highest ever total in ODI cricket surpassing Sri Lanka’s 443. They added one more run to finish the innings at 444 for the loss of 3 wickets.
In reply Pakistan were off to a flying start thanks to Sharjeel Khan’s blitz. The left hander took on the English pace attack and smacked them all over the place.He reached his half century in just 26 balls. Unfortunately he ran out of partners as Woakes kept it tight at the other end. Skipper Morgan set the field for shortish deliveries and the plan worked as Woakes ran through the brittle middle order. Even the experienced batsman came a cropper as England were marching towards a record win in terms of margin.Thanks to some resistance down the order from Amir and Yasir Pakistan managed to avoid the embarrassment as they were bundled out for 275.
England registered a 169 run victory and sealing the series 3-0 with two more games to go.