A day that started for England with walks and bike rides ended with runs, and plenty of them. A barrage of boundaries from Jamie Smith and Ben Duckett meant the home side took control of a match that was delayed after the players got stuck in traffic and then abbreviated by rain, before an explosive cameo from Jos Buttler saw them speed to victory by seven wickets, with 62 balls to spare.
The series thus ended as it started, with a one-sided victory. The match in between was much more competitive but this was a very different display from England, whose fielding was as sharp as it had been sloppy on Sunday, and in particular from their openers, who in Cardiff had scored a combined total of nothing but on Tuesday each reached a rapid half century.
Smith might have travelled in by tube, but as soon as he had a bat in his hand he was motoring. On the ground the Surrey man knows better than any other he looked instantly at home, putting the West Indies bowlers through an excruciating ordeal as he hammered 64 runs off just 28 balls, 46% of which went for boundaries. The first of them, it is true, came off the inside edge, but from there his bat seemed to be made entirely of middle.
England rushed to 50 off just 28 legal deliveries, the last of which was brutally heaved over midwicket by Smith, the ball bouncing once in the stands before disappearing into the street behind – perhaps, inspired by the players’ earlier improvisations, hoping to catch a bus – and by the end of an abbreviated, eight-over powerplay they had already scored 100.
There was just a little bit of luck along the way, and Smith was dropped at midwicket by Jayden Greaves off the first ball of Gudakesh Motie’s first over, Motie having dropped Duckett moments earlier. The bowler gained revenge by bowling Smith with the final ball of the same over, though the four in between had disappeared for 20. By this point England, having come in needing 6.15 an over, had whittled the required run rate down to something only marginally less pedestrian than some players’ journey to the ground, and when Duckett ended an excellent over from Roston Chase by spearing to cover having scored a 46-ball 58 they were most of the way there. Harry Brook was also dropped in what, but for the efforts of a couple of batters, was a car crash of a performance from West Indies, before Buttler’s quickfire 41 – 32 of those from boundaries – took England over the line.
Given their late arrival at the ground it was perhaps understandable that some of the West Indies batters looked underprepared as the game begun, and Hope and Chase lasted only one ball – the latter falling to his first delivery for the second time in three days. They were not helped by England’s excellence in the field, and this time the only catch that did not stick was by Brydon Carse, sprinting to his left at the square leg boundary, though even if he had somehow clung on to Sherfane Rutherford’s mighty blow his momentum would have carried him beyond the rope.
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That was one of two sixes Rutherford hit, and if few batters had a finer excuse than him for feeling a little ill at ease – his last game was 4,000 miles and five time zones away in Mullanpur on Friday, the final outing of his IPL stint with Gujarat Titans – there was little sign of it at the Oval. Coming in with the West Indies innings almost as troubled as their journey to the ground he took only two balls to get his eye in, before hitting his next two for four to slide smoothly into gear.
The 26-year-old ended with 70 off 71, very slightly reducing his average in a format in which he has scored six fifties and a century in just 11 innings to 70.87. With Gudakesh Motie scoring 63 off 54 before being bowled by Matt Potts with the final ball of the innings and Alzarri Joseph adding a handy 41 off 29 at No 8, West Indies recovered from 28 for three and 154 for seven to post 251, adjusted under the DLS method to leave England with a target of 246 and 40 overs to do it. It seemed just about defendable, until England’s openers got to work.
