Cricket/ Triangular Series: Australia beat England by 57 runs in Triangular Series match at Chester-le-Street last night. England's top order folded tamely as the world champions upped the ante in the day-night match.

The hosts found themselves needing to better a hard-working 266 for five, after stand-in captain Marcus Trescothick had surprisingly asked the tourists to bat first under cloudless skies and Andrew Symonds (73) and Damien Martyn (68 not out) profited from sensible batting to haul Australia clear of a mid-innings blip.

Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee then produced near perfect new-ball spells to put England in apparently irretrievable trouble on six for three in the sixth over - and it was thanks only to a recovery mission from Andrew Flintoff and Vikram Solanki that the match was still even remotely alive with 103 for five on the board at the 30-over mark.

Trescothick, leading his country in the absence of groin-injury victim Michael Vaughan, must have been ruing his decision to field first by the time his was the second England wicket to fall - caught behind for a 15-ball duck off McGrath.

His opening partner Andrew Strauss was already gone, starved of run-scoring opportunities by McGrath and Lee and playing on to the latter when his bat wandered wide of his front pad.

Three wickets had fallen in six balls when Paul Collingwood - England's man of the match in Tuesday's landslide Trent Bridge victory over Bangladesh returning to his home ground - also edged on to his stumps to go for a duck and give McGrath his second victim.

Flintoff and Solanki were backs to the wall but dug in for a rearguard stand of 79 in 19 overs.