It was as if a popcorn machine had exploded: hot, sweet, buttery kernels flying this way and that to the delight of onlookers, while the desperate owners pressed buttons at random, willing it to stop. England’s highest one-day international total – a world record score of 498 for four – annihilated a wilting Netherlands attack as Jos Buttler, Phil Salt, Dawid Malan and Liam Livingstone put the God Damn into Amsterdam.
In an innings so stuffed full of superlatives it was hard to know when best to time a quick scratch of the ankle, let alone shimmy off to buy a drink, England walloped 26 sixes – another record – in a three-and-a- bit-hour blitz with short boundaries. Blink and you would miss Salt on the way to his first hundred in an England shirt or Malan building a carefully constructed ton, or Livingstone, who entered the arena like a coiled spring and wound up with England’s fastest one-day fifty, off 17 balls.
