Buttler Dazzles With 116 Off Just 52 Balls as England Seal Series

The fourth and final one-day global between Pakistan and England will be played at Dubai worldwide Stadium in Dubai on Friday.

Bairstow’s position, after six successive Tests in which he was a specialist batsman until replacing Buttler behind the stumps, could conceivably be uncertain again. It was just absolutely incredible – certainly the best one-day knock I’ve ever seen in an England shirt.

Root and Roy scored 140 runs for the second wicket, prompting Morgan to promote Buttler up the order. For England now, thoughts turn to the Twenty20 series, before a test series in South Africa.

It included a century from 46 deliveries, 15 better than the 61-ball hundred he made against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in May 2014, while his tally of eight sixes was the most by any England player in a single ODI innings, beating Andrew Flintoff’s seven against West Indies at Lord’s in 2004.

The wicketkeeper-batsman ended unbeaten on 116 off 52 balls to take England to a massive 355 for 5 – its highest ODI score away from home – before walking off to a standing ovation from the crowd. The Lancashire man’s innings was the fastest in English ODI history, and the fifth fastest in one-day history altogether. He rode his luck early on, but as his feet got moving and he became confident enough to hit against the spin, you saw why the England management rate him so highly. “You never want to get too one-dimensional”.

Buttler’s rampaging batting overshadowed opener Roy’s 117-ball 102 after England, which won the toss, thrived on a batting-friendly pitch. “We played poor cricket which cost us the series”.

“I think the confidence from Sharjah [helped]”, he said.

“Credit to Buttler, but we could have done a lot better in the last few overs”. “He’s played really well in the last two series and he really wanted that hundred”, Buttler said of Roy’s knock.

Roy and fellow opener Alex Hales had laid the platform for England as they took the score to 54 in the 12th over when lanky paceman Mohammad Irfan had Hales caught in the deep off a miscued hook shot.

Bayliss admitted that the team’s primary goal is a victory in the 2019 Cricket World Cup but also knows that England have a lot of hard work to do in the meantime.

Morgan will have been delighted with the manner in which his unchanged side for the entire series responded and learned after their heavy defeat in the first ODI.

England’s tour of UAE will end with three Twenty20 Internationals against Pakistan, and Bayliss said he was looking at the three matches as part of the side’s preparations for next year’s World T20 in India.

This was not indiscriminate slogging – it was the flawless storm of clean hitting and innovative trick shots, but it all added up to glorious carnage.