Key events
1st over: England 12-0 (Salt 10, Duckett 0) Yep the wicket and outfield look like the sort a batter would drool over. England get twelve off the first over as Salt bunts down the ground for four and then flicks off his pads in real style for SIX! Flamboyant from the opener.
Righto, Spencer Johnson has the new ball for Australia and has some big size 12s to fill. Phil Salt will take the first ball and Ben Duckett is down the non-strikers. The pitch looks a belter. PLAY!
The players emerge for a burst of the anthems. The DJ at the ground was blasting some AC/DC earlier, clearly showing bias to the Antipodeans. My now nearly teenage nephew used to dance around his living room to AC/DC as a toddler, in the nud nud. Just posting that to embarrass him.
This was his pantless ‘jam’ if I recall:
Martin Pegan has penned this handy guide to the new faces in the Aussie set up:
Planning around Australia’s white-ball sides has been much more haphazard. Opportunities have been handed out to emerging talents and second-stringers while frontliners have been on personal or parental leave, injured, or simply rested with eyes on bigger, more lucrative prizes. In the past 18 months alone, Australia blooded enough ODI players to fill a full XI. The hope seemed to be that a handful of them would not only stick to the international white-ball squads, but eventually push their Test credentials too. The broad brush approach now looks like a masterstroke, after Australia’s initial Champions Trophy squad was decimated by a raft of withdrawals and injuries, leaving six of the debutants during that recent period to take the reins on a global stage.”
Guy Hornsby is our first caller!
“Morning Jimbo, morning everyone. I’m approaching today with trepidation and realism. India showed England are not really on it. We seem to be happy going into a tournament in Pakistan with only one front line spinner, pretty much an outlier. I feel for Rehan Ahmed in particular. Livingstone and Root have a lot riding on them. Our batting has been flaky, with only Duckett consistent. We need him, Root and Buttler to go well. Australia are missing their pace attack, but underestimating them never ends well. Basically I’m tired and I’m struggling to see how we don’t fall in a heap in the next two weeks. Convince me!”
Errr… get your eyeball around this and BELIEVE* Guy!
*This OBO is – of course – entirely impartial.
And here’s one Ali prepared earlier on England’s headaches:
While Buttler likely needs positive results for his own job security, such thoughts – much like the Test team under Stokes and McCullum – are being parked. Ben Duckett caused a stir during the recent 3-0 defeat in India when he said he did not care about the whitewash if England went on to win the Champions Trophy; a statement that saw its qualifier widely ignored and annoyed a good deal of supporters in the process. For Buttler, having also defended his team’s work ethic in India, it was misunderstood. “Every single player who plays international sport, no matter what sport it is, I can guarantee would not have got there if they weren’t ultra-competitive and didn’t want to win,” said Buttler, clarifying his opener’s remarks.
What people must understand is that people saying you want to win doesn’t guarantee results.
You have to find ways to look after the things that you can control; to work out how to be really present at a tournament like the Champions Trophy. Getting close to what we’re capable of is the thing I want most out of us, and if we’re doing that then the results will come as well.”
Ali Martin is our man on the ground, he’s dipped his quill early and sent us this:
Greetings from Lahore, where the sun is shining and a humdinger awaits. First time at the Gaddafi Stadium for me and have to say, it’s a pretty cool ground. It also feels box fresh after a refurbishment that beat its deadline in a way that any written journalist would doff a cap too. Speaking of which, there’s no Aussie press pack on the ground in Pakistan, sadly, although we’ll no doubt catch up with a few at the World Test Championship final this summer. Talk of a decent crowd today and the queues outside were promising. See what happens, might look sparse on the TV at first – security is very tight outside – but should hopefully fill up later.”
Australia win the toss and will BOWL
The sun is beating down on the newly spruced Gaddafi stadium in Lahore and the captains are ready for the toss. The coin is flipped and Australia win it, Steve Smith is going to bowl first!
Jos Buttler says he probably would have done the same but was 50-50. There might be some dew around later.
Here are the teams, Steve Smith does well to reel off his XI when asked at the toss. We knew England’s already as they named it two days out. Jamie Smith batting at three and keeping is the big piece of news.
Australia Travis Head, Matt Short, Steve Smith (c), Marnus Labuschagne, Josh Inglis (wk), Alex Carey, Glenn Maxwell, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Adam Zampa, Spencer Johnson
England Ben Duckett, Phil Salt, Jamie Smith (wk), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler (capt), Liam Livingstone, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood
Preamble
James Wallace
‘Listen, don’t mention the A’ word, I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right…’
Hello and welcome to Australia v England in the Champions Trophy. In all seriousness, these two white ball sides are a shadow of their Test teams and each will be looking to get over recent bruising encounters and start the tournament off with a victory. With three games in the group stages there’s only room for one slip up at the most.
Dear old England are on the back of a pummelling in India and there are questions and accusations swirling. A poor showing in this tournament would leave Jos Buttler extremely vulnerable in his position as captain and only serve to lump more pressure onto newly promoted white ball coach Brendon McCullum. Maybe there will be a sheen of sweat behind the shades today?
Australia are fifty over World Champions but are also coming off a 2-0 series defeat to Sri Lanka and have a depleted squad. This will be the first global tournament in over a decade that they don’t have at least one of Messrs Cummins, Hazelwood or Starc at their disposal. Then again, it’s Australia, they tend to be pretty decent at turning it on when it counts in the big ones.
Plenty to dig into then, the toss is about fifteen minutes away and play will begin at 9am GMT. If you are tuning in then do let us know by “>flinging us an email .
