Can England master restrictive cricket challenge?

There's more than a tinge of irony to the fact that Australia beat England on Friday (September 11) by playing a brand of 50-over cricket that the home team used to rely on but never were too good at before their revamp in the format five years ago. It was based on not being over-ambitious with the bat, employing your Test attack to execute Test match plans with the new-ball, packing your batting line-up with fluent strokemakers rather than explosive ball-strikers and throwing yourself around the field like your lives depended on it. At Old Trafford in the opening ODI, Aaron Finch & Co showed England how it could be done and how it could still be good enough to thwart the hosts' current no-holds-barred approach, which has made them world champions.

It was evident in the way Mitchell Marsh went about resurrecting the Australian innings