Quickfire Jos Buttler ton secures ODI series victory for England

Jos Buttler’s record-breaking century and a more routine one from Jason Roy have fired England to an 84-run win over Pakistan in a high-scoring final one-day global in Dubai and a 3-1 victory in the series.

It was the joint seventh fastest hundred in one-day cricket history and overshadowed a maiden ODI century by opener Jason Roy, who scored 102.

Pakistan needed to improve upon their best-ever run chase – 327 against Bangladesh in March previous year – but despite good knocks from Babar Azam (51 off 51 balls), Shoaib Malik (34-ball 52) and skipper Azhar Ali (44 off 32 balls) they fell short.

The visitors are leading the series 2-1 after winning the second ODI by 95 runs and third by six wickets following a six-wicket loss in the series-opener.

Buttler, who already held the record of being the fastest Englishman to an ODI ton when he reached the landmark off 61 balls against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in 2014, improved on his mark to reach three figures off just 46 balls this time. Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid picked 3 wickets each and successfully demolished Pakistan’s home fortress.

Roy soon found his feet, as he and Root particularly punished a few poor spin bowling from Pakistan, although Roy was dropped off Yasir Shah when on 77 – first slip failing to grab the chance after a deflection off the wicketkeeper.

A squash-like swing to reverse sweep paceman Anwar Ali highlighted his unique talent while his brute force was none better illustrated in the fact he went from 50 to 100 in just 16 balls.

There is footage of Viv Richards during his innings of 189 not out against England at Old Trafford in 1984 – sometimes referenced as the greatest ODI innings – where he steps outside off stump and whips a perfectly respectable ball at least a yard outside off stump through square leg for four.

After a trio of calamitous run outs in the third game of the series as Pakistan collapsed from 132-2 to 208 all out, Mohammad Hafeez (37) was the victim of another mix-up between the wickets to leave the score reading 129-3.

“They should have a lot of confidence from the way they’ve played, going into the three Twenty20 matches – knowing they can play in these conditions against this quality of opposition”. “Things which are not in your control, you can’t control, so I think the best thing is to focus on what you have in your hands. I am part of the team selection”, said Ali.

“But to be honest I haven’t trained any differently”.

“The last match is a must-win game for us”. “We were in a position to score big and on that kind of pitch it wasn’t easy to chase so at that time 208 looked good and had we taken one or two wickets then the match could have been in our favour”.