Clarke leads Australia to ODI win

Second One-day international, Emirates Old Trafford:

Australia 315-7 (50 overs) beat England 227 (44.2 overs) by 88 runs

Michael Clarke scored a century as Australia beat England by 88 runs in the second one-day international to go 1-0 up in the five-match series.

After Friday's opening match was washed out, the visiting skipper's 105 from 102 balls helped his side to 315-7.

George Bailey supported Clarke with 82 off 67 balls to hand Australia a best ODI score against England in the UK.

Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler made fifties but the hosts were dismissed for 227 with 5.4 overs left.

"That is a thrashing. England were always going to struggle when they had to chase over 300. The first 10 overs with Mitchell Johnson getting the two wickets, England only flickered. If Kevin Pietersen stayed in longer, anything was possible. Morgan and Buttler played well but there was nothing else to trouble the Aussies. An emphatic victory for Michael Clarke's men and England will have to put their thinking caps on. That was some hiding."

England named a strong batting line-up with Ben Stokes at number eight but were arguably a bowler light, relying on Ravi Bopara and Joe Root to deliver 12 overs.

But Morgan's side got off to a good start when Steve Finn dismissed Shaun Marsh caught behind with only the fourth ball of the match.

There was controversy as Shane Watson was adjudged lbw the very next ball, but reprieved by the Decision Review System when third umpire Aleem Dar viewed that the Australian number three had edged it.

Watson was eventually out for 38 to Bopara, as England opted to review Richard Kettleborough's not out decision and Dar ruled there had been an edge to Buttler.

Aaron Finch made 45 before holing out off James Tredwell, although it was England's spinner who was repeatedly punished on a good pitch by Clarke and Bailey.

The pair were in breathtaking form as they put on 155 for the fourth wicket to take the game away from England.

Bailey struck four sixes before eventually falling to Bopara down the leg side while Clarke nicked behind to Boyd Rankin not long after completing his first one-day international century against England and eighth in all.

1st ODI - Headingley, 6 September, no result 2nd ODI - Old Trafford, 8 September, Australia won by 88 runs 3rd ODI - Edgbaston, 11 September 4th ODI - Cardiff, 14 September 5th ODI - Southampton, 16 September That left Morgan's side needing a record ODI run chase of 316 and their chances vanished after a slow start to their innings.

Opener Michael Carberry, making his home ODI debut, struggled before picking out Clarke at backward point off an inspired Mitchell Johnson for just four and Jonathan Trott departed in the same over for a duck attempting to fend off a wicked lifting delivery.

After Joe Root was bowled by James Faulkner, Pietersen, appearing for the first time as a ODI opener on home soil, gave England a glimmer of hope with two sixes in his 66-ball knock.

But once he fell to Watson for 60 it was game over with Bopara falling caught and bowled to Adam Voges before Morgan went for 54, caught in the deep to give Clint McKay a deserved first wicket.

Although Buttler scored a defiant 75 off 65 balls before giving Fawad Ahmed his first ODI wicket against England, the hosts were bowled out for just 227 and will head to Edgbaston on Wednesday with plenty of food for thought.

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Ashes 2013: bad light sours finale as Australia captain Michael Clarke fronts up to umpire Aleem Dar at the Oval

Clarke revealed he told Dar not to touch him after the official appeared to push him away as he was consulting his light meter.

Clarke was urging the umpires to take the teams off the field after seeing the reading on the light meter, which he said proved the light was darker than when the umpires suspended play in the third Test at Old Trafford as Australia pressed for victory.

“I remember him [Dar] touching me and I asked him politely not to touch me as if I touched him I would be banned for three games,” said Clarke. “There was no comparison with the light. I remember seeing the reading when we were told we had to go off in Manchester.

"There was a big difference. It was certainly darker out there then than in Manchester. We have to go on the umpires’ call. If they say it is safe to keep playing we keep playing.”

Boos rang around the ground when Dar and Kumar Dharmasena took the players off and suspended play. Giles Clarke, the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board and an influential presence at the ICC, will call for the governing body to change regulations regarding bad light.

At the moment umpires have to take the players off the field if the light reading drops from a pre-agreed reading before the game. “It is totally unsatisfactory the way the game ended – the rules are unacceptable and I expect Dave Richardson to change it at the next ICC chief executives meeting,” said Clarke.

The Australian captain had a long conversation with the umpires when it became clear his fielders were struggling to pick up the red ball under the floodlights, which had been switched on for some time before the players went off.

“I just asked why we haven’t got the meter out here,” said Clarke. “It took a few overs to get it out. All the players could see it was dark. You could see your own shadows and around the time that happens is generally close to when the umpires take us off.”

Alastair Cook described lifting the Ashes urn as the “proudest” moment of his life and even though his side missed out on becoming the first England team to win an Ashes series 4-0 he defended the umpires and Clarke from criticism.

“I can understand the crowd and it would have been nice to finish,” said Cook. “It is tough but rules and regulations are there for a reason and it was pretty dark. The umpires had a decision to make and even though it would have been nice to finish it cricket does not work like that. Fair play to Australia for pushing the game and making it a spectacle.”

Ricky Ponting was booed at the Oval four years ago but Australia will be upset Clarke was targeted after attempting to manufacture a finish.

“It doesn’t surprise me [to be booed],” said Clarke. “But that is the way I would like to see cricket played. I like to lead the Australian team in that type of manner.

"We had nothing to lose at 3-0 down but to me even if we were not 3-0 down we would still do everything to win a Test. The risk of losing was there but it was what we had to try and do.”

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Ashes 2013: will Michael 'Pup' Clarke follow Henry 'Tup' Scott in guiding Australia to seven consecutive defeats?

Yet there are still some illuminating parallels between the Australian side that lost seven consecutive Tests against England and the current one under Michael Clarke that has so far lost four.

Michael Clarke’s nickname is ‘Pup’, while the Australian captain for three of those seven defeats was known as ‘Tup’. When Henry Scott was supposed to be leading Australia on their 1886 tour of England, he spent so much time riding round London in the horse-drawn omnibuses on a two-penny ticket that he was nicknamed ‘Tuppence’, then ‘Tup’.

Both Pup and Tup have had their captaincy questioned. Clarke is wise in his changing of bowlers and setting of fields, but what about his off-field man-management? To lose one senior batsman in Ricky Ponting was inevitable, but to lose Mike Hussey – who could still have shown the youngsters how to bat all day – was more than careless.

Tup stayed on in London after his 1886 tour to qualify as a doctor, before returning to Australia. In the outback he rode for long hours, by horse not bus, to visit his patients, and there is still a hospital named after him, the Scott Memorial Hospital, on the road north from Newcastle to Tamworth.

Tup lost all three Tests of his 1886 tour, but he could bat, although you might not think so from a surviving photograph of him posing in his crease. He stands vertically and holds his bat vertically: of the gap between Scott’s bat and pad James Anderson might make something.

Nevertheless, in the game against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Scott pulled the offspinner Saul Wade for six, four, six and six: a record that still stands as the most runs (22) off a four-ball over in first-class cricket. And those were the days not only of four-ball overs but of the ball having to be hit out of the ground, not simply over the boundary, to count six.

But Tup’s man-management was hopeless. Wisden condemned the 1886 tour as “emphatically a failure”, and noted “a lack of enthusiasm and cohesion in the team”. Fred Lillywhite, in his Scores and Biographies, was less diplomatic and more explicit about Tup: “For quarrels among the players were many, and he had not sufficient strength of character to cope with the situation.”

Then as now, Australia’s batting was their major on-field weakness. In reviewing their 1886 tour, Wisden cited “the limited amount of high-class batting”. But they also lost one of their main bowlers to injury, Fred Spofforth, just as Clarke’s men have lost James Pattinson.

England’s batting was based on prototypes of Joe Root, tough northern professionals who hit the ball almost as hard as they hit the bottle and who batted for long periods, while the Australians were still essentially amateurs. And when fisticuffs broke out between the two sides, as they did on at least two recorded occasions in the 1880s, a century before David Warner was born, those northern pros did not back down.

Another cause of the low standard of Australian batting was specific to the period: Adelaide and Brisbane were small towns not cities, Perth did not exist and Tasmania was a backwater. Most cricketers came from Melbourne and Sydney – and because the military kept the flat spaces around Sydney harbour for their barracks and parades, the city had no centre for practice until the Sydney Cricket Ground was developed during the 1880s.

And whenever Melbourne cricketers are involved, so is the Melbourne Cricket Club and its insistence on acting like the counterpart of the MCC at Lord’s. The first four tours of England (or five, as we should count the Aborigines of 1868) were private enterprises: the players put in a stake to cover initial expenses and shared the profits, which were usually handsome. So they were bound to pull together.

But in 1886 Australia’s MCC organised the tour instead, and they refused to pay the players, not even broken-time payments, so a couple of seasoned batsmen refused to tour. All-rounders were left to bat several places too high in the order. The only player who had a first-class batting average of 25 on Scott’s tour was George Giffen, an all-rounder with a big ego: it is conceivable there may be another parallel here with the current tour.

Australia had already lost the last Test of the 1884-5 series, so Tup extended their losing sequence to four Tests with his 3-0 whitewash. Then, while he studied in London, another doctor took over the Australian captaincy in Percy McDonnell, who lost the next three Tests in a row – and he could not heal himself either as he died aged 37.

McDonnell was the first captain to send a Test side in to bat, when England were dismissed for their lowest ever Test total of 45, but with their tough northern pros they still bounced back to win – not by 14 runs, as at Trent Bridge this summer, but 13. A couple more losses followed, featuring bog-standard Australian batting including their lowest ever total in Australia of 42, to make it a seven-match losing sequence.

If Tup’s precedent is anything to go by, Pup’s tour will demand a similar memorial if it ends in a 5-0 whitewash - somewhere that can deal with accidents and emergencies.

Seven Australian Test defeats in a row:

5th Test of 1884-5 at Melbourne: England won by an innings and 98 runs1st Test of 1886 at Old Trafford: England won by four wickets2nd Test of 1886 at Lord’s: England won by an innings and 106 runs3rd Test of 1886 at the Oval: England won by an innings and 217 runs1st Test of 1886-7 at Sydney: England won by 13 runs2nd Test of 1886-7 at Sydney: England won by 71 runsOnly Test of 1887-8 at Sydney: England won by 126 runs

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VIDEO: Clarke reflects on 'tough loss'

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VIDEO: Clarke still 'confident' of series win

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VIDEO: Clarke reflects on 'tough loss'

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