3 lessons for England after their loss to Scotland ahead of ODI series vs Australia
When one hears about a side ranked No. 13 in the ICC ODI Team Rankings beating the No. 1 ranked team, you would dismiss it as an upset but there was nothing upsetting about Scotland's historic six-run win over England at The Grange, Edinburgh on Sunday.
It was only a marginal lbw call in a game against Windies that saw them crash out of the ICC World Cup Qualifiers in March and the win only confirmed the belief among the supporters of the game that a ten-team World Cup wouldn't be the ideal way of spreading the game among the masses.
While Scotland broke records for fun during the one-off contest, England made a game out of the chase thanks to the brilliant 59-ball 105 from Jonny Bairstow who became the first England batsman to register three successive centuries in the 50-over format but his side lost the plot despite some enterprising cameos from the lower order. England are due to play Australia in a five-match ODI series starting from Wednesday and despite Australia missing key performers, England have lessons to learn from their loss to Scotland.
#1 The bowling blues
England rely heavily on their allrounders to come good, especially in the ODIs and when Chris Woakes and Ben Stokes were set to miss cricket due to the hamstring injuries in the Tests against Pakistan, the onus was on the likes of Mark Wood and David Willey to step up. England found out how much they missed the duo the hard way as Scotland notched up their highest ever total in the history of One-Day Internationals. Mark Wood and David Willey both failed to exercise any form of control and went for over 70 runs each in their spell of ten overs.
With the duo of Woakes and Stokes set to miss the first part of the series against Australia, England will hope their bowlers find their mojo back and give more support to Adil Rashid who was the pick of the bowlers the last time England toured Down Under for ODIs earlier this year. Eoin Morgan might also look at Joe Root as an option against the Australians who have a fair amount of left-handed batsmen in their line-up.