With a neat sense of timing, this one-off Twenty20 international fell exactly 47 years to the day that Garry Sobers hit six sixes in an over, roughly half an hour away, in Swansea. Sobers believes that the format is taking players away from Test cricket. While he may be right, the thought would have received short shrift from the crowd yesterday.
A pulsating game went the way of England thanks, at the death, to an all-rounder in Ben Stokes who does not belong in the class of Sobers, but shares the same ability to assert himself in spectacular fashion. Australia needed 12 runs to win from the last over. Stokes contained them to six with his full length complemented by dead-eyed throwing from the outfield.
The initiative ebbed and flowed across the 40 overs. England began and ended their innings relatively slowly, but struck 125 in nine overs in between through Eoin Morgan and Moeen Ali. Steven Smith (90) matched their effort and Australia were on course until Smith heaved David Willey to Sam Billings on the leg side with 18 needed from ten balls.
Willey was just one of the young England players who could take pride in his performance. Reece Topley marked his debut with astute bowling in the later stages, hitting yorker length consistently and not overdoing his slower balls. As for Stokes, near the end of his breakthrough summer he feels more like a fixture than an emerging star. In contrast, Australia’s new or newer players found life unduly tough. Cameron Boyce, flown over for the single match, was introduced with Morgan and Ali set and firing. His one over cost 19 runs; he may not be great company on the journey back. Marcus Stoinis, on debut, came in with 22 needed from 14 balls and found the intensity and pressure a little too much.
While there has never been any equivocation about the way to play Twenty20, England have never packed a side with as many clean hitters. Stokes, who hit their fastest Test hundred since 1902 in May, was shunted down to No 7. Willey was not required, having opened for Northamptonshire on Finals Day at the weekend.
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Although demands were vastly different from those of the Test match in Cardiff, the straight boundary represented a constant. It was here, via a top edge, that Chris Rogers hit his first international six. This time, batsmen targeted the area more deliberately.
Not that the early stages hinted at a run-fest. England hit only two fours during the powerplay and lost both openers. The game would have taken a different course had Ali not narrowly survived a direct hit by Mitchell Marsh early on, but for the next 45 minutes or so, bat dominated forcefully.
Ali showed that grace has its place in the 20-over game, timing and placing the ball sweetly into the leg side, while Morgan, keen-eyed and muscular, showed that his month out of action has been well spent — for England if not Middlesex. Twice he forced balls out of the ground. Malcolm Nash, the bowler sadly for him synonymous with the feat of Sobers, would have smiled ruefully as the sixes accumulated.
There were seven in all to Morgan, whose 74 from 39 balls ended when he drove to long-on. Jos Buttler offered a cameo, Sam Billings was off the pace and Ali saw too little of the strike as Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc pulled things back. Chasing 183, Australia also started badly. David Warner offered a leading edge and Shane Watson was bowled playing on to Steven Finn as he tried unsuccessfully to kick the ball away from the stumps. Poor Watson: on the one occasion this summer when he wanted the ball to strike his pads, fate decreed otherwise.
Smith and Glenn Maxwell did not quite match Morgan and Ali, who added 135 in 75 balls. Their 112 together came from 68, but they forced Morgan to return to Finn earlier than he would have liked. Maxwell raised the hundred by pulling Adil Rashid for six and it took a brilliant, diving catch by Stokes at deep mid-wicket to end the stand when Maxwell miscued.
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How Australia needed the same depth as the England batting. Instead, they lost wickets to the first, fourth and fifth balls of the final over, and England’s summer of limited-overs love produced another victory to cheer.
The other winner was Robin Saxton, given charge of the pitch after the suspension and subsequent departure of Keith Exton as the Glamorgan head groundsman in the wake of the abandonment of the county game versus Hampshire. If the surface represented Saxton’s application, he stands a good chance of landing the job.