This, however, is not going to be a battle of two current white-ball titans. Neither side starts off this tournament a picture of ODI health, and it is how they address – or, more pertinently, conceal – their weaknesses that may be most consequential to the outcome. England have lost 16 of their last 23 ODIs in a run stretching back to the 2023 World Cup, while Australia have come up second best in six of the last eight games. They are further hampered by injuries and high-profile withdrawals: none of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Marsh or Marcus Stoinis are part of Australia’s squad.
It’s the closing bit of that statement, perhaps, that unearths a more rounded reason for what, if England’s recent history is anything to go by, is an on-brand punt. Against India, England’s more established middle order was especially vulnerable to collapses against India’s spinners in the middle overs.
While a calf injury ruled Smith out of that series, his ability against spin in Pakistan was best showcased in the longest format. October’s third Test in Rawalpindi was over on the third morning on an excessively spin-friendly wicket; Pakistan did not bowl a ball of seam and all 20 England wickets fell to the spinners.
“He’s obviously got the game technically and tactically, but I think the head on his shoulders seems to be one of the biggest strengths,” Buttler said. “Nothing seems to faze him too much: I think you could ask him to bat anywhere in the line-up and it wouldn’t faze him. We feel it gives him a nice position to try and really impact the game, make some big runs, and put some pressure on the opposition.”
It means Joe Root, Harry Brook and Buttler himself slot down the order, spreading England’s quality through the middle overs and – theoretically at least – inoculating against the sort of collapses that characterised their white-ball tour of India. The cynical view would term this a rearranging of the deckchairs in the absence of more wholesale changes, but on these wickets against the arguably less challenging task of negotiating Australia’s spinners, Buttler had reason for guarded optimism.
“I think the conditions will be different here [to what] they were in India,” he said. “Everywhere you go around the world has its own nuances and different conditions. We’ve got lots of guys who’ve played in Pakistan before, guys who’ve played in the PSL, so [they’ll be] sharing those experiences. And then every day in a game of cricket, you’ve got to turn up and assess conditions and play accordingly and work on that.”
And unlike the febrile partisanship that can take hold of these occasions when these two sides play each other home or away, this time around, they’ll find themselves greeted by a crowd who doubted they’d see this fixture played here, and are simply glad that it is. At least, for those lucky few who managed to secure tickets.
