Eoin Morgan credited three batting heroes with digging England out of a hole as the Royal London One Day International opener against Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge ended in a thrilling tie.

The host nation were 82-6 early in their pursuit of 287 to win, only for Jos Buttler, Chris Woakes and Liam Plunkett to post the telling contributions that eventually forced a thrilling tie.

Buttler’s 93 kept England in the game, Woakes’ unbeaten 95 gave them hope heading into the final over and Plunkett’s straight six secured an unlikely share of the spoils off the very last ball of the match.

Captain Morgan was relieved with the outcome, but gave a damning appraisal of his team’s overall performance.

“We had a poor day with the ball, in the field and with the bat – particularly early on,” he said.

“Jos Buttler, Chris Woakes and Liam Plunkett got us out of a really sticky situation.

“Regardless of any situation we’re put in, we have a lot of confidence in the guys coming in down the order, but we don’t want to leave them too much to do.

“Jos called on all his experience to guide the innings through, Chris Woakes played out of his skin to put us in a position where it looked like we were going to win the game.

“We’ll take a lot of belief and confidence from that, but it won’t mask the poor performance we put in.”

Match-saver Plunkett is only too happy for England’s lower order to continue playing a decisive role with the bat in white ball cricket.

“They (Buttler & Woakes) put us in a great position after a few early wickets, and we bat all the way down, so we were backing ourselves to take it as deep as possible.

“I feel that if you’re in at the end, you give yourself the best chance of clearing the ropes and luckily enough it happened off the last ball.

“We scrambled that three (off the penultimate ball) because we knew it was our only chance of a draw at the end, then I was just hoping to get the middle of the bat on it and for it to go for six.

“It just shows the batting depth we’ve got and it’s good for the team knowing we can carry on all the way through an innings. If we struggle up top, we can still get a big score.”

Man of the match Woakes, whose unbeaten knock was the highest by a number eight in the history of ODIs, was full of admiration for each of his two successful batting partners.

“We were in a bit of a hole so I tried to build a partnership with Jos,” he said.

“He batted brilliantly, we were ticking over nicely and thought we would take it as deep as possible.

“It was a shame he couldn’t get to three figures, but the guys that came in batted really well, and it’s great to tie after being in a tricky position.

“We needed to clear the ropes and I started clinking it around a little bit, but they bowled well towards the back end, they got it in the hole.

 “I was struggling at one point to find the fence, so I just made sure I was rotating the strike and finally started to find the fence later on.”

“For him (Plunkett) to hit that ball like that was exceptional, credit to him.”

 

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