England captain Harry Brook said on Saturday that his team had underestimated some of the opponents in their group and pledged to do better in the T20 World Cup Super 8 round.
With three tense wins against associate nations and a defeat at the hands of former champions West Indies, England, the tournament’s two-time winners, have been anything but impressive thus far.
Before defeating Scotland and Italy to advance to the Super 8s, they fell badly to the former champions West Indies by 30 runs, and then narrowly defeated Nepal by four runs. On Sunday, they play their first Super 8s game in Pallekele against co-hosts Sri Lanka.
“It was obviously a niggly start to the competition. We probably underestimated a few of the sides and they put up a really good fight and yeah, look, we came here to get through that stage and thankfully we have, so we’re here in the Super 8s and that’s our main focus now,” PTI quoted Brook as saying during the pre-match press conference.
“We see it as a new competition now. Obviously with the no carrying over of points or anything like that, it’s a completely fresh start and we can see it like that as well. Just a few people haven’t fired yet but hopefully with the competition we’re about to come up against, then boys can start to fire and have some good match-winning performances,” Brook added.
In preparation for the T20 World Cup, England defeated Sri Lanka 3-0 in a T20 series at the same venue earlier this month.
“We obviously had a very good series against them here and on this particular ground as well, so we can take a lot of confidence having played here and experience on this surface and this ground. We’re really looking forward to taking them on. And yeah, hopefully we can play our best cricket and really put them under pressure.”
In the group games, Brook acknowledged that his team had been “slightly too careful with the bat” and said they will try to be more aggressive moving ahead.
“We’ve been slightly too careful with the bat. We can probably be a bit more brave in certain situations and having more faith in the guys behind us to be able to go out there and put a decent score on as well.”
Talking about the Sri Lankan team, he said, “I’ve learned that you can’t take any team for granted as we’ve seen in the group stages. We’ve managed to sneak through in a couple of games.
“Some of their batters are batting really well. So hopefully we can get a few wickets in the power play. And Nissanka is on a bit of a heat at the minute. So it would be ideal if we can get him out early.
“We just want to go out there and play our best cricket. We can really look to put them under a little bit more pressure, especially with the batting depth that we got. They’re obviously a strong side with a lot of confidence as well after a few very good wins and if we stick to our guns and play our best cricket there’s no reason why we can’t beat them.”
When asked if Jacob Bethel, a batting all-rounder, is capable of bowling, Brook responded, “Not sure yet… he’s got a decent cut in his finger. So he’d have to have strapping on his finger but if there’s some way we can get around that then we’d like to bowl him but at the minute I don’t think it’s possible. Hopefully he can somehow get over that and roll a few out.”
Asked about rain forecast on Saturday, Brook said, “You can sometimes go down a bit of a rabbit hole thinking that you’re going to play a five over game and then it ends up being a T20 and you kind of play it slightly differently.
“So we’ve just got to prepare as if it is a T20 game and hope that the rain stays away. And then if it doesn’t, then we’ve got to adapt and realise you’ve got to play the game slightly differently.”
