Jacob Bethell scored his much-anticipated first professional century before Jofra Archer ripped through South Africa as England thrashed the Proteas by a record 342 runs in the third one-day international in Southampton.<\/b><\/p>\n
With the series gone, 21-year-old Bethell, long tipped for a huge future despite his meagre county experience, delivered on all of his promise by elegantly hitting 110 from 82 balls in England’s cruise to 414-5.<\/p>\n
The left-hander put on 182 with Joe Root, who himself stroked a 96-ball 100, to lay a platform before Jos Buttler took on the scoring with a destructive 62 not out from 32 balls.<\/p>\n
It was England’s highest total in ODIs for three years and their best effort at home since 2018, while Bethell’s ton, in his 33rd international innings, made him England’s second-youngest ODI centurion after David Gower.<\/p>\n
South Africa were well below the standards set in their impressive wins at Headingley and Lord’s which had already secured the series with a game to spare.<\/p>\n
They dropped Bethell on 44, gave away 19 wides and were 72-9 in 20.5 overs when the players shook hands with Temba Bavuma unable to bat – England’s winning margin the largest in the history of men’s ODIs in terms of runs.<\/p>\n
Archer took four wickets in a fast and hostile new-ball spell, reducing the Proteas to 7-4 and 24-6 from which they never recovered. He finished with 4-18 and Adil Rashid 3-13.<\/p>\n
Though the series was already gone, this was a morale-boosting win for England after a difficult run in the 50-over format.<\/p>\n
The same sides now play a three-match T20 series starting on Wednesday in Cardiff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacob Bethell scored his much-anticipated first professional century before Jofra Archer ripped through South Africa as England thrashed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-406527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115165872965900612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}