Jos Buttler unleashes mayhem against Dutch as England smash ODI record

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 just to stop. England’s highest ODI 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. Blink and you would miss Salt on the way to his first one-day hundred in an England shirt or Malan build a carefully constructed ton, or Livingstone – who entered the arena like a coiled spring and wound up with England’s fastest one-day 50, off just 17 balls. But most eye-opening of all was Jos Buttler, whose IPL warmup had brought him 45 sixes as well as both the most valuable player and leading run-scorer awards. It was safe to say he had his eye in at Amstelveen.

England’s previous highest score was 481 for six against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2018, when Alex Hales and Jonny Bairstow biffed hundreds, with Jason Roy and Eoin Morgan chipping in generously. Hales and Bairstow were not in contention for this tour, for different reasons.

Neither Roy, bowled by his cousin Shane Snater for one in the second over of the day, nor Morgan, leg before wicket for a golden duck with the score 407 for four, will take much personal joy from their single-figure scorecard entries.

Buttler took England past the record with a whipping chip down the ground for six in the last over of the innings, before