England scored the most runs in ODIs against the Netherlands. He smashed his way to 498 runs with three of his batsmen reaching three-figures.
Jos Buttler continued his form with a scintillating century in the first game vs Netherlands. (courtesy: Reuters)
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- Jos Buttler scored one of the fastest centuries in world cricket
- England won by a margin of 232 runs
- Liam Livingstone made joint second fastest fifty in ODIs
England managed to beat the Netherlands by a huge margin of 232 runs in the first ODI of the series. The humble gap came in the form of a tremendous performance with the bat by Eoin Morgan’s men, who posted a record 498 runs on the board. Despite losing the opening wicket of Jason Roy, England added two brilliant hundreds from Phil Salt and David Malan and then took charge with Jos Buttler and Liam Livingstone.
Two of the biggest hitters in world cricket at this point added 91* runs in just 32 balls. While Livingstone was the dominant force in that partnership, scoring 66* off just 22 balls, Butler was not calm either. The batsman scored his second fastest century in ODI cricket, reaching the three-figure mark in 47 balls, before finishing with 162* in 70 balls.
Captain Eoin Morgan praised the right-hander after the match, calling him the best white-ball batsman in the world.
“The last few days have been great. It’s nice to be in this group. Posting such a great score and then Jose finally coming in and he’s his own world, it’s absolutely amazing – that’s probably why That he is the best white-ball cricketer in the world. When people come and play with the mantra that we have been playing for the last 6 years, that’s great. We haven’t played a lot of 50 overs cricket recently. Having played, it is important to have such conditions in the World Cup to be held in India next year,” Morgan said.
Butler himself agreed that he was having the time of his life.
“IPL could not have been better for me, coming here with good touches, good wickets, license to attack. World T20 was good, Ashes was tough, I haven’t had two months of cricket, too fresh, too much motivation, energy and turned to IPL to get the best of myself,” he assessed his current months.
England did not have the required ODI preparation going into the World Cup in India and will hope to experiment as much as they can before the T20 bonanza resumes in Australia later this year.