Key events
Preamble
James Wallace
‘Listen, don’t mention the A’ word, I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right…’
Hello and welcome to Australia v England in the Champions Trophy. In all seriousness, these two white ball sides are a shadow of their Test teams and each will be looking to get over recent bruising encounters and start the tournament off with a victory. With three games in the group stages there’s only room for one slip up at the most.
Dear old England are on the back of a pummelling in India and there are questions and accusations swirling. A poor showing in this tournament would leave Jos Buttler extremely vulnerable in his position as captain and only serve to lump more pressure onto newly promoted white ball coach Brendon McCullum. Maybe there will be a sheen of sweat behind the shades today?
Australia are fifty over World Champions but are also coming off a 2-0 series defeat to Sri Lanka and have a depleted squad. This will be the first global tournament in nearly fifteen years that they don’t have at least one of Messrs Cummins, Hazelwood or Starc at their disposal. Then again, it’s Australia, they tend to be pretty decent at turning it on when it counts in the big ones.
Plenty to dig into then, the toss is about fifteen minutes away and play will begin at 9am GMT. If you are tuning in then do let us know by “>flinging us an email .
