Cricket: Australia Triumphant As England's World-Record Run Ends

All good things come to an end, they say, and so it was for England's record-breaking run of eight successive Twenty20 International wins.

The world champions were always second best during the second international in Melbourne. There were brief spells during the game—when the spinners took a grip on the Australian innings during the middle overs, and when Ian Bell was flailing away merrily at the start of their innings—when you felt that they might just get away with it as they did in the first game, but it was not to be and they fell four runs short of Australia's modest total of 147.

This is, of course, a slightly different England attack to the one that won the World Cup almost 12 months ago, and it showed.

Chris Woakes—for all of the promise that he showed on debut—and Ajmal Shehzad simply don't give the sort of early overs control that Stuart Broad and Ryan Sidebottom did in the West Indies, and it showed as Shane Watson and David Warner got Australia off to a flyer, despite the soggy outfield.

England resumed some semblance of control when Graeme Swann and Michael Yardy turned in superb spells of spin bowling, each finishing with 2-19 from their four overs. Indeed, such was the effect of taking the pace off of the ball that skipper Paul Collingwood even turned to the part-time off-spin of Kevin Pietersen. It didn't have the same effect, with Australia's new one day hope Aaron Finch attacking him from the off.

Finch it was who held the Australian innings together with 53 not out off only 33 balls, but even then 147 looked a beatable total.

And so it seemed, as Bell set about the Australian bowling to score 39 from only 30 balls, but once he was out England fell further and further behind the run rate. Pietersen fell cheaply, Steven Davies spent an age making 29 from 26 balls and Collingwood had yet another failure with the bat to add to his horrible winter.

Australia bowled extremely well at the death, a fact emphasised by the statistics, which show that Tim Bresnan and Woakes both scored at more than a run a ball in the final overs, but only managed one boundary between them.

It was a deserved win for Australia, who took full advantage of having players who have been playing regularly up to now, whereas seven of the England side had had little or no cricket since September. The seven 50-over games begin in Melbourne on Sunday and England will be hoping that some of the ring-rustiness has worn off by then.