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England team beat London traffic ‘in style’ as West Indies get caught in chaos; arrive at The Oval on cycles

Samira Vishwas | June 10, 2025 10:24 AM CST

The third and final ODI between England and the West Indies at The Oval witnessed a delay in the toss owing to a bizarre reason. The Shai Hope-led squad had apparently reached the venue late as they were stuck in heavy traffic in London, resulting in a considerable delay. However, as the development went viral on social media, England Cricket’s social media page revealed how their players beat the traffic to reach the venue on time.

In the 23-second clip captioned, “Arriving at the ground in style. Only one way to beat the road closures in London,” England cricket showed that the players managed to negate the heavy traffic by arriving at the stadium on cycles.

“We were on the bus for a while and then we all decided to get off and get on some lime bikes in. We were in a little bit earlier than the West Indies boys, but we are here now ready to go,” England captain Harry Brook later said at the time of the toss.

West Indies players were late to the venue by almost 15 minutes, which resulted in the toss being delayed by 40 minutes. However, no overs were lost.

England opted to bowl first in the final game of the series, with Brook making no changes to the playing XI.

“We haven’t had a chat yet but it’s going to be ‘let’s try to be as dominant as possible.’ We have got an opportunity here to try and win the series 3-0 and we’re going to giving it our best crack. There was one area – Root’s big score – something we didn’t have in the first game which is really nice to see. Hopefully a few other lads can have that as well today. I quite like the balance that we’ve got, we’ve got a lot of depth with the bat and that gives us opportunities to chase scores like that down the other day where we had a tough start. We’ve got a good bowling unit as well,” he said.

West Indies made two changes with Evin Lewis and Shamar Joseph coming in.

“We were a lot more competitive (in the previous game), the chats that we had before the game, we definitely executed a lot better with both bat and ball. I just want to see the same again today and hopefully we get a win today. A bit more clinical with our tactics, taking each moment as they come, executing those plans and make sure that we have that positive mindset that we always speak about and be as consistent as possible,” Hope said.

West Indies, who lost both the first two matches, are aiming for a consolation win in London, before the proceedings head to the T20I series, which will also comprise three matches.