Curran five-for seals thrilling England victory

PERTH (Agencies): Tom Curran showed a sense of occasion that should stand him and England in good stead with magnificent five for 35 as his match-turning spell gave England a 12-run victory and a 4-1 series triumph that seemed implausible at the halfway stage and for much of the Australian innings.

Curran also managed to upstage what had been shaping to be the perfect unveiling for Perth’s sparkly new Optus Stadium The crowd was 53,781, a record for any ticketed sporting event in Western Australia and their local boys did them proud too.

No sooner had Andrew Tye completed a maiden five-wicket haul in his home city of Perth than 4,000 miles away in Bangalore the gavel came down on his £794,000 Indian Premier League deal with King’s XI Punjab. Marcus Stoinis, the muscular batsman, made 87 but his departure, caught by Curran off Adil Rashid, gave England a sniff.

The partisan punters also got a perfect – or should that be Perth-fect – dismissal when David Willey was caught by Mitch Marsh off Tye. All three players have been members of the Perth Scorchers T20 team in the Big Bash. And to top it off, we had the ground’s first streaker who side-stepped around a few stewards, in the traditional manner, before being rugby-tackled to the ground neck first.

England rested two of their leading bowlers, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood. They were not injured but, said captain Eoin Morgan, they had not recovered well from yesterday’s three-hour flight from Adelaide. That left Woakes to count his IPL winnings – all £810,000 of them from his acquisition by Royal Challengers Bangalore – while a surprising amount of his team-mates failed even to land a gig.

It left England with a pace attack with all of 52 ODI caps between them. Curran produced a superb yorker to dismiss David Warner and complete a poor series for the explosive left-hander, who scored only 73 runs at an average of 14 in the five matches. Steve Smith fared only marginally better 102 runs at 20 compared to his 687 at 137 in the Ashes.

When Curran returned in the 37th over and made an immediate impact. He pinned Glenn Maxwell lbw and was insistent that the not-out decision be reviewed. Two balls later Mitchell Starc was well caught behind low to his left by Jos Buttler.

That left Australia 192 for seven but Tim Paine appeared to be taking his side to victory before Curran stole the show bowling both Adam Zampa and then Paine.