Wonderful Watson can't beat World Record England.

Watson appeals for a wicket during his Man of the Match performance.

1st Twenty20 International at Adelaide
Australia won the toss and new captain Cameron White opted to bat first. This didn't bother England captain Paul Collingwood as he said in interview that he would have picked to bowl first anyway.
The England men where looking to emulate their female counterparts as the England ladies batted second and beat the Aussies by 4 wickets in the same ground before the men got underway.

The 32,000 fans at the Adelaide Oval kept themselves entertained with a few Mexican Waves but the cricket was more than entertaining enough as the T20 matches usually are. Australia got off to a great start with the bat as Watson and Warner added 83 for the opening partnership including 3 huge 6's from Watson off the Bowling of Swann. Michael Yardy then got the wickets of both the openers but the Aussies didn't take as many risks as they should have done and finished on 157-4 from their 20 overs. Apart from White, all of the Aussie batsmen had got in but then not accelerated the run rate and this left a huge amount of batting talent unused on the Aussie bench.

England then began their reply in a emphatic fashion Bell raced to 27 but he had a large slice of luck as he was dropped twice, once off the first ball. Pietersen added 25 before he was out leaving England on 63-3. Morgan and Collingwood then took control but when Collingwood was caught behind trying the reverse sweep for 16 and Wright followed without scoring it left England 104-5 and left the Aussies back in control. Morgan and Bresnan then added a quick 26 and looked comfortable but when Shane Watson got Eoin Morgan out chipping it to cover for 43, things swung back in Australia's favour once again. It then got worse for England as in the very next ball Michael Yardy tried to lean out the way of a bouncer and it just caught the bat and flew straight in to the hands of Aussie wicketkeeper Tim Paine and left Watson on a hatrick.
New man Chris Woakes then came in and in the next over he hit a huge 6 into the second tier of the stand off Shaun Tait. England had no trouble keeping up with the run rate but when they lost Bresnan, with Watson taking the wicket and Lee taking a good catch, England were in danger of running out of wickets. Brett Lee then went for 11 of the second to last over which swung it back in England's favour as they then needed just 4 runs off the last over but Watson was bowling and he took Swann's wicket in the first ball of that over to bring Shahzad to the crease. Another 2 dot balls from Waston built the pressure on the England number 11 and he managed to squeeze a single to put Woakes back on strike with 3 required off 2 balls. Woakes then hit a good shot for 2 which tied the scores and meant that it all came down to the final ball. The youngster kept his head as the field surrounded him and he chipped it over the head of midwicket to give England their 8th successive T20 win, breaking the World record for the most consecutive T20 wins and proving why they are still world champions.
It's not very often that the Man of the Match is on the losing team in a T20 match but Watson was the star man and his 69 runs and 4 wickets left him as the leading run scorer and wicket taker and you can only feel for him as he must be wondering how he could end up on the losing team with that performance.
The next T20 game is at Melbourne on Friday.