England complete T20 series clean sweep to continue Harry Brook's winning start

Independent

a day ago

Harry Brook made it six of the best as England's white-ball captain, wrapping up a second series sweep over the West Indies with a 37-run win Southampton.
Having whitewashed the tourists 3-0 in the ODIs, Brook's men did it again in the T20 leg to cap a triumphant start for the new limited-overs skipper.
The tone was set with a breakneck opening partnership of 120 in just 8.5 overs between Jamie Smith (60) and Ben Duckett (84), paving the way for a towering total of 248 for three – equalling the record score on English soil.
The tourists never got to grips with a chase of that magnitude but still made 211 for eight, Rovman Powell's unbeaten 79 coming too late to make a difference.
With the series already secure, England had nothing to lose and their top-order pair batted with abandon in a powerplay that brought 83 wicketless runs.
Duckett was a bundle of energy at the crease, skipping around and stepping inside the line to cue up a vast array of strokes.
The bowlers struggled to find a safe area to bowl and captain Shai Hope could not plug enough gaps in the field as Duckett reversed his hands, stepped outside off to open up square leg and carved anything short over the in-field.
When Alzarri Joseph tried to sharpen him up with a first-ball bouncer, he casually swatted it for six.
Smith's tactics were more streamlined but no less effective, with an emphasis on big, bludgeoned shots down the ground.
Duckett won the half-century sprint, bringing it up off just 20 balls, but Smith was just a couple behind. He hurried to his first T20 fifty for England with three sixes in four balls off an outmatched Romario Shepherd, with one particularly dazzling blow on the up over extra cover.
His attack ended after 26 brutal balls when he leaned back and hit Gudakesh Motie to Shimron Hetmyer on the boundary, for once lacking distance. Smith was only given his chance at the top of the order due to Phil Salt's paternity leave, but the role already feels like his to lose.
The reward for removing him was the arrival of the series top run-scorer, Jos Buttler, who announced himself by rocking back and hammering Joseph over the crowd and into the concourse in front of the fast-food vans.
Buttler perished after skying a wide ball from Sherfane Rutherford and Duckett saw a first century evade him when he lost his leg stump to Akeal Hosein, but the runs kept flowing.
Brook hit 35no, including eight off the last two balls to level Australia's record score at the same ground in 2013, while Jacob Bethell produced another electric cameo worth 36no from only 16 balls. That included three mighty sixes in succession off Motie and a wonderfully inventive reverse flick to deep third.
It looked a tall order for an brow-beaten West Indies and so it proved, Luke Wood and Liam Dawson taking care of the openers Evin Lewis and Johnson Charles in single figures.
Hetmyer smashed three sixes as he burned brightly and briefly, attempting a fourth off Bethell's left-arm spin but finding the fielder.
Hope went down fighting with 45 before being bounced out by Brydon Carse and Powell took a hefty chunk out of the winning margin, but the chase never quite caught fire.
Rutherford and Shepherd mustered one run between them as Adil Rashid spun out both, with Wood returning to pick up two more late wickets at the death.