Cricket
Melinda Farrell at Trent Bridge 6y

When the burger stand vendors were on alert for white missiles

AUS in ENG 2018, Cricket

There is a t-shirt you sometimes see gleefully worn by England cricket fans. On the front, a few sparse and lonely numbers interrupt a lengthy series of dots and 'w's. Anyone who followed the Ashes in the summer of 2015 doesn't need an explanation for what the symbols represent: Australia's first innings in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge. 60 all out. It was utter carnage that day.

This time, there was coloured clothing and ball was white; it was the bowlers annihilated rather than the batsmen. This time, the front of the commemorative t-shirt will be crammed with fours and sixes. But the sense of witnessing the complete destruction of an Australian side by England was brutally familiar.

Sure, it looked like a good batting pitch. Both captains confirmed as much at the toss. And two years earlier, at the same venue, England had set a world-record total of 444 for 3 against Pakistan. Sure Australia are missing their three best frontline bowlers. And yes, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow did set a sprightly early pace. But did anyone really see this coming?

The Australian attack has pace - Billy Stanlake topped 90mph in his first spell - but there was little movement in the air or off the pitch and Bairstow and Roy punished anything that strayed in line and length. Heck, it wasn't long before they were dispatching the good balls with comparable disdain.

It was probably around the 13-over mark that the thought first really took hold. England had shot to 96 without losing a wicket and a quick scroll through the commentary from two years ago (thanks ESPNcricinfo) reminded that, at the same point in their innings, they had been 78 for 1. Hello.

But still, a collapse was only a nudged domino away, right? And when Jason Roy was run out as a result of D'Arcy Short's sharp fielding, surely that would slow things down. Except that just brought Alex Hales to the crease. The same Alex Hales who scored 171 off 122 balls in that insanity against Pakistan. The same Alex Hales who calls Trent Bridge his home ground and who said before this match that he needed a big score to keep his place in the team. Oh, that Alex Hales.

Tim Paine stood behind the stumps with stitches in his cut mouth. But it was his bowlers who suffered bloody noses as the sucker punches rained down from Bairstow and Hales with increasing frequency. The frustration inflicted on Australia by shots seemingly designed to torment them was as palpable as the glee voiced by the crowd. There was the top edge from Hales that dropped just over the shortest boundary in the ground. And when an Australian finally took a catch in the deep, it was a fan on the wrong side of the boundary as Bairstow launched the ball over cow corner.

The stats pages were now getting almost as severe a workout as Australia's attack. Rohit's record innings, could Bairstow top that? No, as it turned out. And, when Jos Buttler's stay was kept short, any thoughts of the first 500 total evaporated.

Only to be reconstituted by Eoin Morgan.

The England captain batted like a man possessed. If his head had spun around and green bile spewed from his mouth, he could hardly have given Australia's bowlers worse nightmares. There were crazed cross-bat shots and lofted drives and wild hoicks, set off by Hales' more orthodox power at the other end. Such was their profligacy that the crowd started booing when the ball didn't cross the boundary rope. It ended up doing so 62 times throughout the innings. The burger stand vendors were on the alert for white missiles landing in their patties.

By this stage, the highest innings for a men's ODI was a no-brainer. And Morgan's 21-ball 50 meant the magical 500 was back on. England had hurtled from 400 to 450 in the space of 18 deliveries. They had 24 left to reach what could never have been imagined in previous eras. But with 41 runs still to collect, Hales and Morgan were gone, their wickets met by the crowd with a kind of petulant groan, like a child whose parents won't let them eat a fifth chocolate ice cream.

The sight of Joe Root coming in so far down the order said it all: in how many teams would Root be dropped down to bat at No.7?

And after obliterating their own innings record by 37 runs, it was left to witnesses to joke they had finished 20 runs short.

There will be many who bemoan the flat pitch and the lack of contest between bat and ball. But for the England fans present who witnessed England's ferocity with the bat, it was an afternoon of which they can boast in the future, "I was there".

For it was utter carnage this day. Perhaps, some enterprising t-shirt printer will provide another Trent Bridge memento.

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