NOTTINGHAM, England (AP) — Travis Head was at his belligerent best in smashing a career-best 154 not out to underpin Australia's chase of 316 to win the first one-day international against England on Thursday and gain a 13th straight victory in the 50-over format.
It was the left-handed opener's sixth ODI century — and his first since a similarly brutal knock of 137 in Australia's victory over India in the World Cup final 10 months ago.
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England's Will Jacks celebrates reaching his half century as he bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne celebrates with team-mates including Travis Head, on his back, after taking the wicket of England's Harry Brook during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell, left, bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Liam Livingstone bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Aaron Hardie prevents a boundary as he fields during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne fields the ball during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne celebrates taking the wicket of England's Ben Duckett, not pictured, during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Ben Duckett batting during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs with batting partner Marnus Labuschagne during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
The tourists needed a big innings from someone after Ben Duckett hit 95 in England's 315 all out at Trent Bridge, a ground known for being a batter's paradise with short boundaries.
England would have hoped for more after being 211-2 after 32 overs, only for Australia's spinners — including part-time slow bowler Marnus Labuschagne (3-39) — to slow down the run rate and take nine wickets in total, many at crucial times. England's final seven wickets fell for 83 runs, with Head even getting involved with two of the wickets.
Head then let rip with with the bat, hitting 20 fours and five sixes as Australia strolled to 317-3 and a seven-wicket victory with six overs remaining. It was the highest individual score by an Australian in England and bettered his 152 against the English in Melbourne in November 2022, further enhancing his status as one of the world's best and most destructive white-ball batters.
“I've worked extremely hard over a few years and I probably play the game a bit more relaxed now,” Head said. “I take it for what it is and try to enjoy what I'm doing. It's coming off in the way I'm playing.”
To celebrate his century, Head perched his helmet on the top of his bat handle and raised it to the sky. He was there at the end to see Australia over the line in its highest successful ODI chase in England.
Labuschagne was there, too — just like he was in that World Cup final run chase in Ahmedabad — and posted an unbeaten 61-ball 77.
In England's innings, Will Jacks hit 62 for his third half-century in eight ODIs, and Australia's lead spinner Adam Zampa had 3-49 off 10 overs in his 100th ODI.
“We were eyeing up a big score, for sure," England stand-in captain Harry Brook said. “It wasn't meant to be. It was difficult there in the middle against the spinners, we probably didn't rotate the strike as well as we wanted and we ended up getting a below-par score in the end.”
The second ODI of the five-match series between the fierce cricket rivals is at Headingley on Saturday and Australia will hope to have senior players Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Glenn Maxwell available, after they missed out in Nottingham because of illness.
The Australians are set to be without pacer Ben Dwarshuis, who was making his ODI debut but sustained a suspected pectoral strain while throwing off-balance from the boundary during England's innings and went off injured.
Dwarshuis had only bowled four overs to that point and never returned to the field. His absence was part of the reason why Australia bowled only spin for the last 18 overs of England's innings — and the ploy worked.
“The longer the innings went on, we thought pace off was the better option,” Australia captain Mitchell Marsh said. “It was a gut feel and the way we bowled, especially our part-timers, was fantastic.”
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England's Will Jacks celebrates reaching his half century as he bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne celebrates with team-mates including Travis Head, on his back, after taking the wicket of England's Harry Brook during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Jacob Bethell, left, bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Liam Livingstone bats during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Aaron Hardie prevents a boundary as he fields during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne fields the ball during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Marnus Labuschagne celebrates taking the wicket of England's Ben Duckett, not pictured, during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
England's Ben Duckett batting during the first one day international match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs with batting partner Marnus Labuschagne during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
Australia's Travis Head celebrates 100 runs during the first one day international match between England and Australia, at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England, Thursday Sept. 19, 2024. (Nigel French/PA via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is pulling back from its records on Tuesday as the price of crude oil tumbles and technology stocks falter.
The S&P 500 was down 0.9% in afternoon trading, a day after setting an all-time high for the 46th time this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 317 points, or 0.7%, with less than an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower.
Exxon Mobil dropped 2.5%, and energy stocks fell to some of Wall Street's sharpest losses after oil prices tumbled roughly 4%. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, has fallen back below $75 from more than $80 last week.
Crude prices have been weakening as China’s flagging economic growth raises concerns about demand for oil. At the same time, worries have receded about Israel possibly attacking Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation against Iran’s missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude, and a strike could upend its exports to China and elsewhere.
Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 and fell 5.1%. It's a cooldown for the chip company, whose stock is still up 164.5% for the year so far on euphoria about the profits created by the boom around artificial-intelligence technology.
Stocks for companies across the chip industry fell after Dutch supplier ASML reported its latest quarterly results. CEO Christophe Fouquet said AI continues to offer strong upside potential, but “other market segments are taking longer to recover,” and ASML's stock trading in the United States fell fell 17.7%.
Also dragging on the U.S. stock market was UnitedHealth Group. The insurer fell 7.8% despite reporting better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It lowered the top end of its forecasted range for profit over the full year.
Helping to keep the S&P 500 and Dow close to their records set on Monday were gains for several financial companies following better-than-expected profit reports for the summer.
Bank of America rose 1.5%, and CEO Brian Moynihan said his company benefited from higher average loans and fees for investment banking and asset management. Charles Schwab jumped 6.7% after likewise delivering better results than expected. More customers opened brokerage accounts at the company, helping to bring its total client assets to a record $9.92 trillion.
Walgreens Boots Alliance was another winner, up 13.2%, after topping analysts’ forecasts. The drugstore chain also said it will close about 1,200 locations over the next three years as it tries to turn around its struggling U.S. business.
Chipmaker Wolfspeed jumped 19.2% to trim its loss for the year to 68.8% after the Biden-Harris administration announced Tuesday that it plans to provide up to $750 million in direct funding to the company. The money will support its new silicon carbide factory in North Carolina that makes the wafers used in advanced computer chips.
In the bond market, trading of Treasurys resumed after a holiday on Monday, and yields sank following a weaker-than-expected report on manufacturing in New York state.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.03% from 4.10% late Friday. Manufacturing has been one of the areas of the U.S. economy hurt most by high interest rates caused by the Federal Reserve in its efforts to slow the economy enough to stamp out high inflation.
Now, though, the Fed has begun cutting interest rates as it’s widened its focus to include keeping the economy humming instead of just fighting high inflation. And it looks set to continue cutting rates through next year, easing the brakes further off the economy.
Recent reports showing the U.S. economy remains stronger than expected have also raised optimism that the Fed can pull off a perfect landing where it gets inflation down to 2% without causing a recession that many had thought would be necessary.
Because of expectations for continued growth for the U.S. economy, as well as the boost that lower rates can give to corporate profits and to prices for stocks, strategists at UBS raised their forecast for how high the S&P 500 could go this year and next.
Led by Jonathan Golub, they're calling for the S&P 500 to rise to 5,850 by the end of the year, up from their prior forecast of 5,600.
In stock markets abroad, Chinese stocks fell sharply as doubts continue about whether the government will offer enough fiscal stimulus to prop up the world’s second-largest economy.
Stocks in Shanghai fell 2.5%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 3.7%.
Indexes were mixed elsewhere in Asia and in Europe.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
The Charging Bull statue in New York's Financial District is shown on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
FILE - People pass the entrance for the Wall Street subway station on Sept. 2, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
FILE -A passerby moves past an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index and stock prices outside a securities building Friday, Oct. 11, 2024 in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama, File)