Sensational Eoin Morgan takes England to win over Afghanistan with record-breaking knock

Back spasm? What back spasm? Eoin Morgan overcame his troublesome back to smash an extraordinary century of sixes in a record-breaking knock against Afghanistan.

It set up a vast total of 397 and helped England to a 150-run win that leaves them well on course to make the semi-finals with time to spare. They top the table having played five of their nine group games.

The records felt endless. Morgan hit more sixes (17) than anyone has in an ODI before. His team hit more sixes in a single innings than they had at any entire World Cup before. It was the highest total of this World Cup, and England’s highest ever World Cup total.

England’s was an innings of two parts. For the first 31 overs, the top three nudged it to get 168 on the board, a fine platform but nothing more. There were three sixes, all in Jonny Bairstow’s 99-ball 90. They even had their lowest powerplay (46 for the loss of James Vince, top edging a pull) since the last Champions Trophy. Joe Root came knocked it about unobtrusively, as only Root can, scoring off most balls but rarely hitting boundaries.

And then Gulbadin Naib overstepped, giving Morgan – at that stage one off seven balls – a free hit. He smashed it, and the next ball, for his first two sixes, and never looked back. England scored 229 off the last 19 overs at more than two runs a ball. They hit 22 more sixes, 17 of them off Morgan’s bat. He was dropped on 28, with Dawlat Zadran producing a poor effort – emblematic of a shambolic showing in the field – on the midwicket fence.

This was remarkable hitting from Morgan. Often he is only credited as England’s puppet master, but he is a remarkable batsman too. Rashid Khan, the world’s best T20 bowlers, was sent for seven sixes by Morgan alone, and 110 runs in nine overs overall. This was Morgan at his best, crouching deep, staying still and launching hard over the legside. He perished looking for his 18th six, caught at long-off for 148 from 71 balls. Old Trafford could not quite believe what it had seen but it says everything about this England team that they have four individual ODI centuries faster than this – two for Jos Buttler, and one each for Moeen Ali and Jonny Bairstow.

Moeen finished the job with four late sixes in a superb cameo that took England to 25 sixes, the most ever in an ODI. They had made 397, their highest World Cup total, and got just four runs off eight balls from Buttler and Ben Stokes, two handy hitters. Root now has 367 runs from 368 balls at this tournament, but here he was a merely Morgan’s lackey, getting the skipper on strike. England have never made more than two centuries at a single World Cup before; Root came within 12 of his third of this tournament.

So by the time Jofra Archer bowled Noor Ali Zadran with his second ball, the game was up. Afghanistan batted steadily through their overs, going nowhere fast.It mattered not that Bairstow dropped two chances, at slip and in the deep (he also caught two), or that Hashmatullah Shahidi made Afghanistan’s highest score of the competition (76), and shared in their highest ever World Cup partnership (94 with Asghar Afghan) in their highest ever World Cup total. Hashmatullah was badly bashed on the helmet by Mark Wood when he had 24, but recovered brilliantly.

He was one of five wickets to fall in the final 10 overs, with the extremes of England’s attack – Adil Rashid’s leggies and the pace of Archer and Wood – sharing the spoils. There was no desperate urgency, because Morgan had done the hard yards earlier.