England captain Eoin Morgan marked his return to cricket by top-scoring for his side in a five-run win over Australia in the lone Twenty20 international in Cardiff on Monday.
Morgan made 74 and shared a third-wicket stand of 135 in just 75 balls with fellow left-hander Moeen Ali (72 not out) in a total of 182-5 after England, sent into bat, had slumped to 18-2.
However, Australia were on course for victory while skipper Steven Smith was making a Twenty20 international best 90, but they lost five wickets for 16 runs in 14 balls and finished on 177-8.
Photo: Reuters
England all-rounder Ben Stokes, who held a brilliant catch in the deep to dismiss Glenn Maxwell, was entrusted with a last over where Australia needed just 12 more runs to win. However, they lost three wickets, two to run outs, with Stokes also having Nathan Coulter-Nile out for a duck when Adil Rashid held a skyer at short third-man.
Stokes conceded just six runs off the over.
Morgan’s innings was a vindication of the month’s break he had from cricket after being rested by Middlesex — whose director of cricket, Angus Fraser, is also an England selector — following a poor run of domestic form.
“It was brilliant, a great game of cricket to win,” former Ireland international Morgan told Sky Sports.
“You can learn a lot from playing in close games against top opposition,” said Morgan, who also led England to a Twenty20 and one-day series win over New Zealand earlier this season.
“It was impressive the way Ben Stokes bowled that final over and delivered his skills after just finishing a five-game Test series,” added Morgan, who played no part in England’s 3-2 Ashes series win.
“It was one of those games... We were hot and cold with the ball, but credit to Eoin and Moeen,” Smith said. “We couldn’t get another partnership going after me and Glenn, and that was a big difference.”
Earlier, England lost openers Alex Hales (3) and Jason Roy (11) in four balls from paceman Pat Cummins to be 18-2 in four overs.
However, Morgan struck a superb straight six off all-rounder Shaun Marsh that sent the ball soaring out of the ground and into the River Taff.
He also hammered Cummins for two sixes before he was well-caught on the long-on boundary by Shane Watson off paceman Coulter-Nile. Morgan faced 39 balls, hitting three fours and seven sixes.
Cummins came back well to finish with two for 25.
Man-of-the-match Ali faced 46 balls, striking six fours and two sixes.
Australia, as happened to England, saw their openers fall cheaply, with David Warner out for 4 and Watson dismissed for 8.
Warner saw a miscued pull-shot off David Willey fly straight to Steven Finn at third-man.
Watson’s woeful tour, which saw him dropped from the Test side after Australia’s defeat in the Ashes opener in Cardiff, continued when he played on to fast bowler Finn, the batsman missing an attempted kick at the ball before it trickled onto the stumps.
Smith and Maxwell (44) repaired the damage with a third-wicket stand of 112.
Maxwell fell to off-spinner Ali’s first ball when a pull-shot was brilliantly caught by a diving Stokes, running round at long-on.
Smith was in sight of a century when he pulled Willey to Roy at midwicket.
He faced 53 balls, hitting four sixes and seven fours.
It was Smith’s highest score in Twenty20 internationals, surpassing his previous best of 34 against Sri Lanka in Perth in 2010.
Australia were then 165-5, needing 18 to win off nine balls — a target that proved beyond them.
England now face 50-over world champions Australia in a five-match one-day international series starting in Southampton tomorrow.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier