Australia kicked off their World Cup preparations in fine fashion beating the hosts England in their first warm up match.
Steve Smith marked his return to international cricket in fine fashion by scoring a century as Australia edged past England to begin the world cup preparations on a positive note..
Australia who were put into bat by the hosts did not really dictate the terms but kept the scoreboard moving steadily. The whole innings saw just 2 significant partnerships, firstly with Warner and Marsh which was followed by Smith and Khawaja.
Each of Warner, Khawaja and Marsh got starts but couldn’t go on to convert them to a huge score. Smith hung in with the incoming batsmen to score a century on his first game for Australia after the suspension. A quickfire 30 from Alex Carey propelled Australia’s score to 297/9 in their quota of 50 overs.
England played out a similar innings as that of their counterparts, failing to convert their starts and losing wickets at regular intervals. Buttler and James Vince joined hands at 100/3 and threatened to take the game away from Australia.
Both of them recorded their individual 50’s but their wickets eventually provoked a collapse. Woakes hung in their till the end scoring a valiant 40 to keep the side’s hopes alive. But his run out in the 48th over proved to be the final nail in the coffin as England surrendered to a 12 run defeat.
Australia 297 for 9 (Smith 116, Warner 43, Plunkett 4-69) beat England 285 all out (Vince 64, Buttler 52, Behrendorff 2-43) by 12 runs.
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