‘A lot of fun' – Harry Brook's England reign starts with West Indies whitewash
England claimed their first ODI series whitewash in three years – when they beat the Netherlands by an identical scoreline – after prevailing by seven wickets in a one-sided contest at the Oval.
Jamie Smith's explosive 64 from 28 balls broke the back of a revised chase of 246 from 40 overs, with Brook's predecessor as skipper Jos Buttler getting them home with an unbeaten 41 off 20 deliveries.
Get there safely in singles? 🤔
Nah, hit it out the ground to win the game! 💪 pic.twitter.com/2nFa85OpMs
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 3, 2025
English white-ball cricket was in the doldrums after a dreadful Champions Trophy campaign which led to Buttler's resignation as skipper earlier this year but Brook has started on the right track.
'It's a hell of a lot of fun when you're enjoying it with a lot of mates,' said Brook, who will now turn his attention to the three-match T20 series that starts on Friday in Chester-le-Street.
'I think we've got such a good side. The depth in batting is amazing and then we've got a lot of skilful bowlers as well. I'm really looking forward to the future and seeing how it goes.'
England were as dominant at Edgbaston last week as they were on Tuesday but they were off the boil at Sophia Gardens on Sunday, dropping four catches and fluffing two run-outs in a ragged fielding display.
Only an all-time great 166 not out from Joe Root got them out of jail but Brook believes how close-knit the group are can be emphasised by their reaction to how they fielded in Cardiff.
'I don't feel like we really deserved that win,' he reflected. 'Our fielding was a little bit sloppy. A few lads spoke up about it and said it wasn't good enough, which I think is a really good sign.
'But because we are so tight as a group, we've managed to scrape a victory there. Obviously, having Joe Root in your side is always a big help.'
One of the big calls ahead of this series was Smith's promotion to open alongside Ben Duckett. The pair made ducks in Cardiff but rebounded with half-centuries as Duckett contributed 58 off 46 balls.
Smith, who replaced Phil Salt as opener, averaged 17.63 after his first dozen ODI innings with a best of 49 but demonstrated the class that has made him an automatic selection for England's Test side.
'He's gone out there and and played extremely well, but he's not a slogger,' Brook added. 'He's playing proper shots, he's putting their bad balls away and he's putting them under immense pressure.
'We've seen in Test cricket how good he is. He knows how to bat. We want batters that can put their best balls under pressure, manipulate the field, and score big runs.
'He's going to have a good go at it at the top in one-day cricket and I think everybody's excited to see how he goes.'
The Windies had recovered from 28 for three and 154 for seven to post 251 for nine after arriving to the ground late because of traffic which – combined with a 95-minute rain delay – meant a reduced game.
Adil Rashid was the pick of the England bowlers with three for 40, with Brook quick to hail his evergreen Yorkshire team-mate.
'Rash has got so much skill,' Brook added. 'He's a very wily bowler. He's he's been around the block for a while, and he keeps on getting better and better.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Sale's Du Preez brothers: It's an emotional end of an era - selfishly we wanted Jean-Luc's move to fail!
At the entrance to Sale Sharks' Carrington training centre, a slogan is painted on the wall to remind those who visit of the club's ethos and values. Part of it reads: 'A team. A community. A family.'
Time Out
an hour ago
- Time Out
The LAX/Metro Transit Center is opening today—here's what you need to know
L.A. has never been exactly renowned for its public transit, but Metro is working overtime to change that—specifically in time for next year's FIFA World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl and, of course, the 2028 Olympics. One huge step in the right direction? Starting today, June 6, access to the Los Angeles International Airport —one of the busiest airports in the country—will become more streamlined, thanks to the LAX/Metro Transit Center, the ambitious new station Angelenos have long been asking for. In the words of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, today marks the 'beginning of a new era in our city.' And to celebrate the big opening, rides across the entire Metro system—rail lines, buses, Metro Bike Share and rideshare service Metro Micro—are free from Friday through Sunday. The LAX/Metro Transit Center officially opened to mariachi music and remarks from city leaders including Mayor Bass, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins and Metro Board Chair Janice Hahn, who joked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'Hey, can you give me a ride to LAX?' Here's hoping the new station means fielding fewer of those dreaded requests from your friends. LAX/Metro Transit Center Station rail and bus connections The new station, located at 9225 Aviation Boulevard, closes the final gap in the K Line, which will now run directly from Expo/Crenshaw to Redondo Beach—the airport-adjacent center fills a gap in that line that used to require you to take a bus to continue south. And it's the new terminus of the C line, which starts in Norwalk (it also connects the C and K lines—an added benefit). If you live along the C or K lines, the station is a godsend for airport visits. But if you don't live in, say, Inglewood or Downey, will this benefit you? Well, as you can see in the map below, these lines also intersect with other lines, meaning that with just one transfer, you can find yourself on a train bound for the airport. The A line (Azusa to Long Beach) allows you to transfer to the C line, and the E line, which reaches all the way from Santa Monica through Downtown and into East L.A., meets up with the K line, meaning those riders can also map a car-free route to LAX. (Though from Santa Monica and Downtown, there are buses that can probably get you to the station more directly and quickly.) In addition to the two light rail lines stopping at the station, the LAX/Metro Transit Center will also serve 14 bus lines—including six Metro bus lines and partner lines including the Big Blue Bus, Culver CityBus, Torrance Transit, GTrans and Beach Cities—with 16 bays for bus transfers. The station will also offer a Metro Micro bay. What about the Automated People Mover? Now, once you've done all the mental navigation and actual navigation of getting to the LAX/Metro Transit Center with your luggage in tow, unfortunately you're not done yet. That's when you'll need to board a free Los Angeles World Airports shuttle to LAX, which will run every 10 minutes and deposit you at your terminal. That's not a bad solution, but it's a placeholder until the long-awaited Automated People Mover is ready—which is projected to finally open in early 2026 (though you can see it doing some test runs through the station now). When that glorious day arrives, the APM will allow travelers to step onto elevated, entirely electric train cars and bypass traffic on their way to the terminals. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (@metrolosangeles) And now for the station itself. While the idea has been decades in the making, actual construction on the nearly $900-million project began in 2021, and it's the eighth completed project in Metro's ambitious Twenty-Eight by '28 initiative—which is prioritizing projects that will provide more connectivity to major sports venues for the city's upcoming 'car-free' Olympics. The entire site of the station is approximately 500,000 square feet (the size of almost nine football fields). It boasts 11 elevators, 12 escalators and nine staircases where you can access the bus bays on the ground level or ascend and then descend to the concourse, where you'll find the light rail trains. The MTC will be able to accommodate up to 5,000 passengers an hour. While there aren't dining and shopping options like you'll find in some cities' major transit stations, there are public restrooms, a customer service center and automated storage for 50 bikes. The visual centerpiece is an origami-like spiral sculpture, 'The Distance of the Sun,' by L.A. native artist Glenn Kaino that hangs above the escalators. Elsewhere in the station, digital displays depict 18 poignant portraits of Metro riders created by local artists. There's still more work to be done, but the LAX/Metro Transit Center is an impressive achievement that the city and its residents can be proud of. Any step toward making the airport experience a bit easier and connecting the disparate parts of L.A. is a huge win.
Wales Online
an hour ago
- Wales Online
The £6bn rail line argument that masks what you should be really angry about
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Over the last few days, there has been one hot topic in the world of Welsh politics - a train line which will run between Oxford and Cambridge. Given these two cities are roughly 200 miles from Wales, you can be forgiven for asking why. East West Rail is a railway project which will link Oxford and Cambridge at an estimated cost of £6.6bn. Any money spent on it will trigger extra payments to Scotland and Northern Ireland so they can spend it on their transport systems. But, just as has been the case throughout the HS2 debacle, there won't be any extra money for the Welsh Government. The reason for this is both incredibly simple and reasonable on the surface but devillishly complicated and truly unfair beneath it. It may not necessarily be a scandal in itself. But it symbolises everything that is wrong with how rail funding is allocated in England and Wales. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here On the face of it, this issue isn't linked to the spending review that has been happening in Westminster for the last six months or more and of which chancellor Rachel Reeves will stand up in the Commons on Wednesday and deliver the conclusion. Yet it helps shed a light on why that will be enormously complex to understand and why the real story may not be the one you read in headlines that evening. So bear with us while we go through it. The fury from politicians Opposition politicians in Wales have been fulminating about East West rail. They say that the rail line should have been classified as an England-only project like Crossrail so that the Welsh Government would get a guaranteed share. Lib Dem MP David Chadwick said Wales will lose out to the tune of between £306m and £363m as a result. Describing it as another HS2, he said: "Labour expects people across Wales to believe the ridiculous idea that this project will benefit them, and they are justified in not giving Wales the money it needs to improve our own public transport systems. 'It's a disgrace, and it shows there has been no meaningful change since in the way Wales is treated since Labour took power compared to the Conservatives." Plaid Cymru's leader Mr ap Iorwerth took a similar tack, telling plenary: "For all the talk of the UK Government acknowledging somehow that Welsh rail has been historically underfunded, this is some partnership in power." Yet, while there's a lot of truth to what they're saying, it's also much more complicated. Which is where the spending review comes in. Comparability factors There will be so many numbers in the paperwork that accompanies Wednesday's spending review that finding the most important ones isn't straightforward. Yet if you want to know just how much of the England and Wales transport pot is going to be sucked into paying for massive rail projects in England like HS2 (£66bn) or East West rail (£6bn) or all the tram/train projects being promised in England outside London (£15bn), then look out for the overall transport comparability factor for Wales. Very simply, this is the number that the Treasury uses to work out how much the Welsh Government should get for every £1 it spends on transport in England. The reason everyone has been so, so angry about HS2 and the massive billions being poured is that back in 2015, Wales used to get a comparability factor of 80.9%. Yet when the number crunchers in Horse Guards Road sat down to work out how much the Welsh Government should get at the last spending review in 2021, that comparability factor fell to just 33.5%. Ouch. For every £1 spent on transport by Westminster, since the last spending review the Welsh Government has received a population adjusted share (5%) of 33.5%. Or about 1.6p. For context, it used to be around 4p. If Mr Chadwick and Mr Iorwerth are right and the UK government plans to plough even more money into rail in England in the coming years on projects like HS2, East Coast and what the Tories used to call Northern Powerhouse rail, then the new comparability factor that the Treasury mathematicians will conjure up this time could be even lower. But even that is massively misleading. Because if the UK government also promises to plough vast sums into rail in Wales then the comparability factor for the Welsh Government would not rise - it would fall further still. Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. Even if they were classified as England-only, the money would go to the Welsh Government which isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending. "The way that the system operates at the moment—for years I've been saying—is redundant," Wales' transport minister Ken Skates has said. "The east-west line, which has been in development, I believe, for around about 20 years now, is part of the rail network enhancements pipeline, where everything in a large footprint, a substantial footprint, including Wales, is packaged together. "Where you have all schemes in England and Wales packaged together in what's called the regional network enhancement pipeline it means that projects in Wales are always going to be competing on the business case with projects in affluent areas of the south-east, of London. That means that we are at a disadvantage. "I want to see it change. I've been saying it for years. There's nothing new in this story. I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. In 2021, the Wales Governance Centre told MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee that had rail been fully devolved to the Welsh Government, Wales would have received an additional £514m for enhancements via Network Rail had rail infrastructure been devolved as it is in Scotland. So when Leeds West and Pudsey MP Ms Reeves gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday, you can pretty much guarantee there will at least one or two headlines relevant Wales. But we may not understand what they really mean for a while yet and East West rail won't help us understand either.
