Leeds: England captain Michael Vaughan did his best to keep his emotions in check after seeing his side here on Thursday achieve their biggest wickets’ win against Australia in a one-day International.

Victory by nine wickets at Vaughan’s Headingley home ground saw England take a 1-0 lead in their best of three series with the world champions. It was also the biggest wickets margin achieved by either side in 83 limited overs matches between the two countries stretching back 35 years as well as England’s third win over Australia this season after triumphs in the one-off Twenty20 match and the triangular one-day series.

England and Australia are due to play the first of five Ashes Tests from July 21 with Ricky Ponting’s tourists looking for their ninth successive series win. However, this latest result is bound to fire home supporters’ hopes of turning the tide.

But Vaughan felt that “it can’t hinder your confidence when you win by nine wickets against a team like Australia. But how much an effect the one-dayers have on the Ashes, who knows? History suggests it won’t have any. But as individuals there will only be two more knocks before the series starts so you have to make the most of every opportunity you get.”

In Saturday’s tied triangular series final against Australia at Lord’s, England slumped to 33 for five but at Headingley they didn’t lose a wicket until Andrew Strauss was out for 41 in the 25th over.

“We learnt a lot from Saturday’s game, when you chase quite a smallish total it is important not to let them back into the game and at Lord’s we let them back in too early,” Vaughan said. “Today (Thursday) we just wanted to give ourselves a platform if we needed to accelerate towards the last 10 or 15 overs as we had players down the order to do that.” (AFP)