This was a missed opportunity for England, throwing away a chance not only to go 1-0 up in the series but to make a statement in doing so. They were bowled out for 315 after winning the toss at Trent Bridge against an Australian attack that featured only three frontline bowlers: one of them, Ben Dwarshuis, was injured after four overs, while Sean Abbott's five overs cost 50.
From 168 for 1 in the 25th over, and 213 for 2 in the 33rd, England suffered a major collapse against occasional bowling. Between them, Australia's spinners bowled the final 18 overs of the innings, 30.4 overs in total, and took nine wickets - a national record, with Marnus Labuschagne (3 for 39), Travis Head (2 for 34) and Matthew Short (1 for 68) supplementing Adam Zampa's 3 for 49.
The game turned on Ben Duckett's soft dismissal, chipping a slow, short googly back to Labuschagne for 95 - or "that 'seed' that I hit back to him," as Duckett later joked. "I was trying to set myself up to go really big… The fact they bowled spin for the rest of the innings was tough to watch." Harry Brook fell in the same fashion to the same bowler for 39.
Those wickets seemed to be the result of lapses in concentration - perhaps even an overcorrection to the tempo of ODIs. None of England's XI had played a 50-over game at any level since December, and were conscious of how long they had to bat. Duckett predicted that Brendon McCullum would have told him, "If you ever get that ball again, hit it for six."
Less so for England's middle order, and Liam Livingstone in particular. After Jamie Smith had swung Short straight to long-on, Livingstone decided that the first ball of Zampa's final three-over spell was a chance to exert some pressure: instead, he skipped down and holed out, leaving Jacob Bethell to bat with the lower order for the final 7.5 overs.
England's battle to find the right tempo was embodied by Adil Rashid, the leading ODI run-scorer in their inexperienced XI. He walked out at No. 11 and hit his first ball down long-on's throat to leave the final two balls of Head's 50th over unbowled. Since 2019, England have struggled to locate the 'cruising speed' that defined their middle-overs batting under Eoin Morgan.
Brook's own reflections had a bullishness that evoked Morgan's responses to England defeats under him. "We're out there to score runs," Brook said. "If you get caught somewhere on the boundary or in the infield, who cares? Another day, that could go for six… They hit quite a few up in the air and they landed safely, so a little bit unlucky at times for us."
The challenge for Brook himself, as well as his team-mates, is adjusting to a format that he hardly plays. This was England's first ODI of 2024, and their domestic 50-over competition has overlapped with the Hundred for the last four years: the clash rules out not only the current crop of internationals, but the majority of the next generation too.
Take Jordan Cox, England's spare batter on Thursday: he has only played four List A games in his career - three of them for England Lions- compared to 125 T20s. "It is slightly different because most of us don't play a lot of 50-over cricket now," Duckett said. "It's only when you are playing for England. But I think that's something that you've almost got to pick up straightaway."
Duckett's first innings as an ODI opener - he had batted at No. 3 or 4 in his previous 11 games - was a qualified success. "I'd have taken it at the start of the day," he said. "But in a losing cause and not going on to get that big score, it's slightly frustrating." The contrast with Travis Head, who batted through Australia's chase for 154 not out, was obvious.
His promotion to open ahead of Will Jacks was founded in a recognition that ODI openers have the opportunities to dictate games, and the signs through his innings - low-risk attacking shots in the Powerplay, then dominance against spin - were positive despite the anticlimactic end. "I really want to go and score hundreds at the top of the order," Duckett said.
"Today highlighted that big scores are a massive part of playing 50-over cricket," Marcus Trescothick, England's interim coach, said - and the simple truth is that England's batters have rarely made them. Only two England players have reached 150 in an ODI innings in the last five years: Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes.
Both players would add heft to England's middle order for February's Champions Trophy and their absences added to the sense of a team in a strange period of transition. This series should represent the start of a new era for England's white-ball set-up but with a stand-in captain and coach, it feels like an afterthought at the end of a long season.