An incendiary century from Ben Stokes helped brush aside the Netherlands for a 160-run victory in Pune that lifted Jos Buttler’s men off the bottom of the World Cup table - not that the dyke didn’t threaten to once again burst along the way.
Could England sink any lower against one of the Low Countries? It was the question being asked before this basement battle and for an hour it looked eminently possible. Batting first after winning the toss, a hideous, self-inflicted collapse turned 133 for one from 20 overs into a troubling 192 for six by the 36th, with Buttler, a captain looking increasingly bereft, among those adding to England’s hall of shame in this failed campaign.
Stokes was plugging the leak at the other end, however, and with Chris Woakes at No 8 eventually offering the kind of base-level competency absent from a couple of others with a 45-ball 51, England’s talisman fired.
He ransacked 108 from 84 balls to pass 10,000 international runs across all formats and help post 339 for nine, a target that proved beyond the capabilities of a side that felled Bangladesh and South Africa by setting a target. Though the Dutch were 179 all out in 37.2 overs, despite two drops from an England side that previously had fielding as its one area in credit, this was over at the halfway stage.
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