3 lessons for England after their loss to Scotland ahead of ODI series vs Australia

When one hears about a side ranked No. 13 in the ICC ODI Team Rankings beating the No. 1 ranked team, you would dismiss it as an upset but there was nothing upsetting about Scotland's historic six-run win over England at The Grange, Edinburgh on Sunday.

It was only a marginal lbw call in a game against Windies that saw them crash out of the ICC World Cup Qualifiers in March and the win only confirmed the belief among the supporters of the game that a ten-team World Cup wouldn't be the ideal way of spreading the game among the masses.

While Scotland broke records for fun during the one-off contest, England made a game out of the chase thanks to the brilliant 59-ball 105 from Jonny Bairstow who became the first England batsman to register three successive centuries in the 50-over format but his side lost the plot despite some enterprising cameos from the lower order. England are due to play Australia in a five-match ODI series starting from Wednesday and despite Australia missing key performers, England have lessons to learn from their loss to Scotland.

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#1 The bowling blues

England rely heavily on their allrounders to come good, especially in the ODIs and when Chris Woakes and Ben Stokes were set to miss cricket due to the hamstring injuries in the Tests against Pakistan, the onus was on the likes of Mark Wood and David Willey to step up. England found out how much they missed the duo the hard way as Scotland notched up their highest ever total in the history of One-Day Internationals. Mark Wood and David Willey both failed to exercise any form of control and went for over 70 runs each in their spell of ten overs.

With the duo of Woakes and Stokes set to miss the first part of the series against Australia, England will hope their bowlers find their mojo back and give more support to Adil Rashid who was the pick of the bowlers the last time England toured Down Under for ODIs earlier this year. Eoin Morgan might also look at Joe Root as an option against the Australians who have a fair amount of left-handed batsmen in their line-up.

#2 The Morgan problem

One of the finest strikers of the cricket ball, Eoin Morgan has been the centrifugal force around which England orchestrated their revival in the one-day format after the 2015 World Cup. Morgan though has been going through a rough patch recently and has not been able to keep up with the expectations from him as a batsman.

Against Scotland, he came in with his side firmly in the driver's seat, needing 152 runs from 23 runs with eight wickets in hand but despite looking in control during his stay, he couldn't stay longer and was dismissed for a 15-ball 20.

He continued his poor run of form in ODIs from the tour to Australia where he could only score 99 runs in five games with the highest score of 41. Having played over 200 ODIs, he will back himself to use his experience to get out of the run of low scores and continue leading his side from the front, with the bat as well.

#3 The Roy conundrum

The talented England opener has the potential to be one of the most destructive batsmen in limited-overs format but has struggled to find consistency yet. He's often registered a tall score but has followed it up with many low ones which haven't helped his cause.

After hitting a belligerent 180 in 151 balls at Sydney in the first of the five matches against Australia, Roy failed to cross the 50-run mark in his next nine innings. Roy had a similar issue during his stint with Delhi Daredevils at the Indian Premier League 2018. He smashed 91 against Mumbai Indians but followed them up with scores of 1, 5, 11 and 12 to end his disappointing time as teams bowled spin to him to keep him quiet.

When Jonny Bairstow was going all guns blazing against Scotland, Roy rightly played second fiddle but couldn't kick on despite having got a start and was out for 34, once again to spin bowling. England have a plethora of stroke-makers waiting to bat in the top order and hence, Roy will know he is running out of time to sort his game and stay relevant ahead of the 2019 World Cup at home.