Could have whitewashed full strength Aussies, says Adil Rashid

English leg-spinner Adil Rashid has glorified this rampant English side to even greater extents than their already impressive run in ODI cricket. Amidst talks of the Australian struggles originating in the absence of their six key men either nursing injury afflictions or catering to their suspensions, Rashid spoke of how England would have been on the verge of a historic whitewash even with all the senior players in the squad.

In a well-reasoned thought he mentioned how all of these players, Steve Smith, David Warner, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Marsh featured at some point or the other in the one-day series back in Australia right after the Ashes, and England won that series 4-1, losing only the fourth match of the series, which was a dead rubber.

On being asked if things would have been different, he said, "Those players were still playing in Australia - Steve Smith, Warner, Cummins, Hazlewood. They were still playing. We won 4-1 there, and here it's 4-0, so I think it's very similar."

Even though his team is sky-high on confidence, as a group the Englishmen are not complacent or getting ahead of themselves by harboring thoughts of white-washing the rather underwhelming Aussies. "We're not talking about that at the moment. Once the game's done, if you've got the whitewash, then you've got things to talk about."

"We can't take it lightly but once know you have one over (a team), you've got (a few) wickets, you know they'll always have that in the back of their minds."

Rashid, who recently overtook Graeme Swann to become the leading English spinner in ODIs, has been as deadly as the English batsmen. 11 wickets in four matches have made sure that in no contest have Australia really found their way in the middle overs after testing spells from the opening bowlers. With a squandered red-ball career, Rashid is more focused than ever and the influx of wrist spinners in the limited overs matches will make him a very instrumental element of the side leading up to the World Cup.