Australia’s Mitchell Starc hopes England scars reopened by pace attack
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Version 0 of 1. Mitchell Starc believes Australia’s three-wicket victory in the first match of the Tri-Series has “reopened a few scars” within the England team before the countries’ opening World Cup game in Melbourne next month. England were blown away by the pace of Starc and Pat Cummins who picked up five wickets between them in the absence of the rested Mitchell Johnson. Eoin Morgan’s team found themselves 33 for four in the ninth over of their innings after Starc had taken two wickets with the opening three balls of the match. Only a magnificent century from Morgan in his first game as full-time captain got the tourists to a respectable total of 234. But it never looked enough as Australia, inspired by David Warner’s third ODI hundred, chased down their target with 10 overs to spare to secure a bonus-point win. The teams meet again in Hobart next Friday, with a potential third match in Perth on 1 February providing both edge out India to reach the Tri-Series final. However, these games will be a preamble to a mouthwatering World Cup encounter at the MCG on Valentine’s Day. Starc, who finished with figures of four for 42, hopes his side’s win in Sydney has undermined England’s confidence and brought back bad memories of last winter when Australia followed up an Ashes whitewash with a 4-1 ODI series victory. “Hopefully we reopened a few scars tonight,” said the left-arm fast bowler. “They’re going to have to be out here for a few months now with this Tri-Series and the World Cup so there’s no better way to kick off our campaign than getting one above them tonight. “I think we played really well with bat and ball, great intensity and the only way to go is to try and improve that.” Starc and Cummins must have given England’s batsmen flashbacks of Johnson too as the pair sent down deliveries which breached the 90mph barrier. That’s something Johnson did regularly when he took 37 wickets at 13.97 during last winter’s Ashes series. Starc said: “I guess blokes bowling fast is handy. It has that intimidation factor towards some of the batsmen. We might get some faster wickets than this, in Perth or something. Having that pace is good. Pat bowled a few at 150kph and we obviously have Mitch coming back in at some point bowling rapid as well. It’s a great combination.” Morgan was disappointed with his team’s performance in his first international match since he took over the one-day captaincy from Alastair Cook. “We came into the game with a lot of good preparation under our belt and a lot of expectation on ourselves,” he said. “They bowled well up front but nothing that we shouldn’t be capable of dealing with. “We could easily have been two down and gone on and posted a par or above-par score, but continuing to lose wickets like we did put us in a bad position. We weren’t good enough today.” England were without Jimmy Anderson after the leader of their bowling attack failed to recover fully from the knee injury that caused him to miss the pre-Christmas tour of Sri Lanka. Morgan, though, is hopeful the 32-year-old will return for the match against India in Brisbane on Tuesday. “Jimmy’s likely to play next week,” he said. “We have four days and three days of training before then. Providing he improves throughout the week he’ll be more than likely fit for selection. “I’m not 100% sure on his injury but he is crucial to our bowling lineup. He’s our most experienced bowler, he’s hugely likely to take wickets early because of the amount of swing he gets and he’s great to have in the team.” |