England looks to keep momentum in dead rubber

London: The third and final One-Day International between England and South Africa at Lord’s on Monday is a dead rubber, but should be worth every penny on the entertainment front even if it doesn’t provide the indisputable answer to the unstoppable force paradox.

Two matches are done, and England came out on top on both occasions.

The Eoin Morgan-led side won the first game at Headingley by a convincing 72-run margin, but if it thought it had South Africa figured out, AB de Villiers’s men dispelled such notions with a gallant fight in the second game.

That fight, headlined by Quinton de Kock, de Villiers, David Miller and Chris Morris, brought South Africa within a shot of winning the game in Southampton and taking the series to the decider, but with Mark Wood at his best, the visiting side fell short by two runs.

That gave England a first ODI series win over South Africa since 2013-14, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 host with the tournament opener against Bangladesh just around the corner.

After the poor run at the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, England has raised its 50-over game to a whole new level with a young batting unit showing that with a mix of aggression and calculated risk-taking, they are capable of destroying bowling attacks.

That explains why England has scored upwards of 300 more often than any other team in this period. In fact, in its last three games, England’s average total has been 332.3 – that’s amazing consistency.

South Africa, of course, needs a win more than England. Not because it hasn’t been a good ODI side in recent times – it won series against New Zealand and Sri Lanka before arriving in England, so that’s hardly a concern – but because it will want to go into the global ICC event with some wind in its sails.

South Africa has all the right components to push for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 title, but looking that far ahead might be difficult after a 3-0 reversal, 2-1 will be much better, and that’s what it will target at Lord’s against the English juggernaut.

Teams from

England: Eoin Morgan (capt), Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Sam Billings, Joe Root, Moeen Ali, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler (wk), Chris Woakes, Jake Ball, Mark Wood, David Willey, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Jonny Bairstow.

South Africa: AB de Villiers (capt), Hashim Amla, Farhaan Behardien, Quinton de Kock (wk), JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, David Miller, Chris Morris, Dwaine Pretorius, Imran Tahir, Keshav Maharaj, Morne Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Andile Phehlukwayo, Kagiso Rabada.

Stats and trivia

• South Africa have lost all three of their ODIs at Lord's, all against England.
• Hashim Amla needs another 23 runs to reach 7000 in ODIs.
• Stokes and Moeen Ali both need three more wickets to reach 50 in ODIs.

Match facts
Monday May 29, 2017
Start time 11am local (1000 GMT)