Ben Hollioake's England career began in a blazingly memorable fashion. Here, we delve into the Wisden Almanack archive to find his one-day international debut against Australia at Lord's in 1997, when he was aged just 19 years and 195 days. The spring of 1997 was a very strange time to be an Englishman. England's footballers beat Brazil and France on the way to Le Tournoi trophy, Labour beat the Conservatives in a General Election landslide, the Spice Girls took the USA by storm … and England's cricketers beat the Australians in four successive matches.

By the time Ben Hollioake was selected to play in the final one-day match at Lord's, the Texaco Trophy was already in the bag. Ben's elder brother Adam had sealed victory, not once, but twice, with innings of 66 not out and 53 not out at Headingley and The Oval, and would make it a hat-trick of winning hits later in the afternoon.

But nobody would be able to upstage Hollioake junior, whose innings of 63 off 48 balls - against Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne no less – blasted a challenging target of 270 clean out of the water. The feelgood factor reverberated. Within a fortnight Australia had capitulated again, trounced by nine wickets in the first Test at Edgbaston.

It couldn't last of course, and Australia struck back to seal the Ashes 3-2. But while it lasted, it was very good indeed.

Almanack report
Scorecard

Andrew Miller is on the staff of Wisden.com

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