After a group stage escape not dissimilar to Indiana Jones rolling under a falling stone door, England are through to the Super Eights of the men’s T20 World Cup. As he left Antigua, fedora grasped at the last split-second, Jos Buttler admitted Australia’s victory over Scotland the night before had been a “nervous watch”.
It had been a pretty fretful day overall, too, the England captain having looked positively drained after the 41-run win against Namibia. With rain clouds hovering over the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium and for three hours proving as unshiftable as the Master Blaster himself back in the day, things had hung in the balance for the defending champions. Who knows, possibly even jobs.
But tropical sunshine has since broken out for Buttler and his men, who have now travelled to St Lucia, 220 miles south of Antigua, as opposed to 4,000 miles east back to London Heathrow. There they will meet the hosts West Indies on Wednesday night and South Africa two days later. Then comes a return to Barbados for a date with the tournament’s surprise package, USA, next Sunday.
“It is a challenge,” Buttler said, regarding this rapid-fire run of three games in five days. “But we’ve had so many rain-affected games, people are chomping at the bit to play. I think guys have to be smart around training in the days leading up to it but I think we are quite accustomed to these kinds of scenarios.”
This Super Eight phase – two groups of four that will throw up the semi-finalists – is a total reset, with neither points nor first round net run-rate carried over. There is only one quirk as regards jostling for positions: India, should they make it, are guaranteed to play in the second semi-final in Guyana on 27 June, as opposed to the first in Trinidad the night before. The reason? It is a 10.30am start local time, thus prime time evening fodder for the sport’s all-important TV audience in India.
First things first, England must carry the winning habit accrued against Oman and Namibia over to full member opposition, having lost seven of their last eight live matches against them in the last two white-ball World Cups. How they go about it will be intriguing after that truncated game against Namibia in which Buttler – with input from Matthew Mott and Kieron Pollard – switched from the intended unchanged side to one specifically designed for a shorter thrash.
Though bespoke, it may be that England were more structurally balanced for having the extra seamer, with Sam Curran swapped in for Will Jacks and drying up Namibia’s chase with two overs that cost just 13 runs. Albeit unused with the bat, Curran would also offer a second left-hander alongside Moeen Ali. That said, with Liam Livingstone picking up a possible side injury, and England monitoring the issue, Jacks may return to the XI.
As usual, Buttler declined to engage on matters of selection, stressing the importance of a squad mentality and the need to tailor lineups for conditions and opposition. Things may well change again for the first two games at Daren Sammy Cricket Ground, where a truer surface could finally allow England’s plunderbats to show off their wares after just 33.1 overs in the middle thus far.
While admittedly skewed by that wild drop-in pitch on Long Island, it has still been a tournament for the bowlers so far, with the overall batting strike-rate of 103 runs per 100 balls the lowest of any T20 World Cup to date. As such, it has been a far cry from the “slugfest” that Rob Key predicted when naming England’s squad (even if slow pitches do still make muscular power-hitters a must-have).
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It has been a shift in tempo from the Indian Premier League that came before, where a collective strike-rate of 150 had many wondering why youngsters would bother choosing to turn their arm over. As Buttler pointed out, much of this came down to the IPL’s impact sub rule that emboldened sides, plus the flatter pitches that are more prevalent in Indian short-form cricket.
“There’s a much better balance between bat and ball [in this tournament],” said Buttler. “Maybe sometimes it’s been more in favour of the bowlers but they’ve been on the wrong end of that for long enough so they’re quite happy. There was always going to be some assistance for them in this part of the world.”
As well as the inherent difference of watching national teams duke it out, as opposed to franchises, the conditions have made for a more gripping spectacle. Not that England, having wriggled free of their latest booby trap and sneaked into the last eight, would have done things the easy way regardless.