thursDAY, march 31, 2016
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England “buzzing” after special performance Y
ou dream of these things. Your bowlers pull back a side from 89 for 1 in 10 overs to keep them down to 153, and your opener hits four fours in the first over. He goes on to score 78 off 44 balls, and by the time he gets out you are left needing 44 runs at under a run a ball. The nerves of chasing in a big game are knocked straight out of the window. Jason Roy did just that with his uncluttered approach on a pitch he could trust. New Zealand had pulled back sides earlier in the tournament, but they couldn’t recover from the Roy assault. This was Roy’s first Twenty20 international fifty, but he brings with him an impressive body of work, a career strike rate of 141.46 in all Twenty20 cricket, including two centuries. England have similarly flown under the radar a bit, and Roy was pretty pleased the detractors had been proven wrong. “We’re that sort of a side,” Roy said. “We’ve had a lot of negative feedback from a few people and to be in a World cup final now has hopefully got a few people on our side. There’s been a huge amount of support all tournament
The England dugout erupts with joy after completing a seven-wicket win to reach the final (Getty Images)
from back home and around the world so thanks to all those people.” This comeback in the tournament is all the sweeter after the way they had been stream-rolled by a Chris Gayle century in their first match. “It’s pretty cool,” Roy said. “After the
first game it was pretty far away. It’s something that we’re really buzzing for. It’s going to be an incredible experience, and we can’t wait.” Chris Jordan and Ben Stokes set up the win with an amazing spell of yorkers and variations at the end
of New Zealand’s innings, going for just 20 in the last four. It was a continuation from their impressive effort against Sri Lanka when a late Angelo Mathews assault had put them under pressure. “The momentum that we carried over from the end of their innings to ours was outstanding,” Roy said. “They’ve grown in confidence from the Sri Lanka performance. It was just perfect.” Then Roy came out blazing. He said it was the plan to try to knock the stuffing out of New Zealand’s defence. “You kind of want to give yourself a chance,” Roy said. “But when you get off to a good start like that you kind of just want to keep going, and I did. I got a bit of luck and got a few boundaries, hit a few gaps. The next minute I was there and next minute I was out. Yeah it was an idea to go out there and smash every ball to be honest. Sometimes you go out there and struggle your first 10 balls and don’t hit a boundary. “That’s pretty special for me, to get this group of boys to a final. Obviously it wasn’t just me - the bowlers were outstanding towards the end, their skill sets were amazing. I’m just huge-
ly proud to be involved.” Coming into the tournament, England captain Eoin Morgan spoke of how they needed to “embrace the naiveté”. Roy said the philosophy didn’t change for a big game. “All the boys today were extremely chilled out,” he said. “We go out and do what we practice: if it works it works, it doesn’t it doesn’t. We’ll have bad days and good days but it’s gone our way the last few days.” There is going to be one more big day after what Roy termed a day “as good as it probably gets”. It will be a totally new set of conditions for England, and could be against either West Indies, who beat them earlier, or the pre-tournament favourites India. It is a day England are totally “buzzed for”. Roy summed up what’s in store: “We’re getting better with every game. It’s just another game of cricket. It just happens to be at Eden Gardens in the World Cup final in front of 100,000 people. It’s going to be an incredible experience but we’re going to go out there and play our natural way and play the brand of cricket we’ve played for the last year or so.” (Cricinfo)
ICC T20 World Cup…
Kohli, Gayle headline Wankhede big bash fidence to the team. Samuel Badree seems to take the mickey out of the Powerplay overs every time he bowls. He doesn’t rely on turn, doesn’t often believe in flight, but faithfully follows a wicket-to-wicket line. The batsmen are tied down, and when they try to escape, they tend to fall. Hard.
Virat Kohli
Chris Gayle
C
hris Gayle. Virat Kohli. Dwayne Bravo. MS Dhoni. The Wankhede stadium will be screening an ensemble-driven action movie as much it hosts a cricket match on Thursday night. Those individuals and their styles of play contribute to a lot of the interest surrounding this game, and also typify there are various ways to establish T20 batting dominance. India’s has been to simply extend their Test and oneday game into the Twenty20s arena, and when all goes well, they get the bulk of their runs through orthodox cricket. West Indies, ideally, wouldn’t want their long-format form anywhere near them right now. Helpfully, this format has a tight cap on the number of overs so the big-hitters can keep hitting big without worrying about consequences. Case in point are the
methods that their marquee players use. Gayle likes to “beat” the ball. No wonder it rockets as far away from him as it can, hoping to be lost somewhere in the rings of Saturn. Kohli is kinder in assisting with the ball’s travels, and even throws in a few surprises - patrons waiting in the off stump line could end up at midwicket almost as often as they do in the covers. Both teams clearly have lots of cream at the top, but the middle looks a bit squishy. It’s been over two years since Denesh Ramdin or Suresh Raina have hit a T20 fifty. Dwayne Bravo, at No. 5, has looked unsure whether he needs to be the aggressor or the anchor. Yuvraj Singh has been similarly jittery, but an ankle injury ruled him out of the World T20. That leads West Indies to the prospect of bowling at a player - one of Ajinkya Rahane, Manish
Pandey or Pawan Negi - who hasn’t faced a ball in this tournament. But Mumbai is just about the perfect venue for the out-of-form and brand new batsmen to get into the swing of things - the lowest total in the tournament here has been Afghanistan’s 172 against South Africa. Quite apart from tactics and strategy, there are players from both sides who may be playing their last World Cup, so the incentive to make it to Eden Gardens - for the final - for one more match will be very strong. In the spotlight The last time India were in Mumbai, they missed the hell out of R Ashwin. It was an ODI, three of the opposition batsmen scored centuries and they were left chasing a 400plus total. He did not have his best game against Australia, but his presence in the XI still goes a long way to adding con-
Team news
India haven’t made any changes to their XI since the start of the tournament. But now, with Yuvraj ruled out, they will be forced to do so ahead of the semi-final of the tournament. India 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Suresh Raina, 5 Manish Pandey/Ajinkya
Rahane/Pawan Negi, 6 MS Dhoni (capt and wk), 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Ravindra Jadeja, 9 R Ashwin, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Ashish Nehra West Indies will be without Andre Fletcher, who was ruled out with a hamstring injury. His replacement Lendl Simmons has a chance at getting a game straight away.
(Cricinfo)