Befire one gets too carried away with how nicely England appear to be shaping up ahead of the T20 World Cup, it is worth thinking back to this ground on September 13 last year.
England had just dismantled New Zealand by 181 runs to take a 2-1 lead in their one-day international series, Ben Stokes’s 182 — the highest score ever by an Englishman in the format — building optimism ahead of the flight to India for what turned out to be an historically bad 50-over World Cup defence.
“We’re not defending anything,” captain Jos Buttler had insisted on its eve. He could not have been proved more emphatically correct.
Caveat noted, though, this was a hugely encouraging night — a seven-wicket triumph over Pakistan ensuring a 2-0 series victory, England’s first in T20s since winning the last World Cup in Australia at the back end of 2022, has been salvaged from the frustrations of a damp week.
Where, on that September day last year, Stokes’s epic masked one or two cracks that soon formed chasms, this was a clinical all-round display in which England exposed no glaring weakness.
Then, failures by Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root foreshadowed miserable World Cups for England’s most banked-on batters; here, each of the top-four looked in good touch.
Buttler and Phil Salt shared a blistering partnership of 82 in just 6.2 overs, effectively making a chase of 158 a formality from the outset. Will Jacks at No3 ensured no momentum was lost, driving his first ball for four on the up, before Bairstow launched three sixes to kill the game.
Harry Brook, meanwhile, was a looming presence over that New Zealand series, outside the World Cup squad but near-certain to force his way in at someone’s expense. Here, he had the pleasure of nailing the winning runs into the crowd, knowing his place in the XI is secure.
In that New Zealand series, Adil Rashid played just once amid calf trouble, Mark Wood not at all, while Jofra Archer was in light training only, billed at best case as travelling back-up for an attack that looked less than top class.
On Thursday night, though, Rashid was the standout, taking two for 27 in a middle-over spell that turned the game.
Wood and Archer bowled menacingly in tandem, the former touching 96mph and taking two short-ball wickets, while Archer ousted the fast-starting Babar Azam and came through another outing unscathed.
“It’s really exciting,” skipper Buttler said afterwards of his express pair. “Any time you see pace in the game, especially those two bowling together, it’s a great place to be.”
Beyond the obvious boost of having key players in good form, however, this simply feels a better-rounded team with fewer questions to answer going into Tuesday’s opener against Scotland.
“I think that was different, there was a bit going on where things weren’t as clear,” Rashid admitted on Thursday night, when asked how the current state of apparent calm compared with last year’s New Zealand muddle.
“Definitely now, there’s a lot of clarity in terms of players, individuals, the squads, what we’re looking to do. Everybody’s on the same page and it’s about us going out there and doing the job.”
Clarity has been the buzzword of this build-up, after Buttler and white-ball head coach Matthew Mott were accused of failing to provide it during the 50-over debacle, and from the squad announcement onwards there has been obvious emphasis on the need to define roles and approach.
This simply feels a better-rounded team with fewer questions to answer
Stokes’s decision to make himself unavailable actually made the batting puzzle a straightforward one, with only the over-reliance on right-handers a nagging doubt.
That Sam Curran, player of the tournament at the last World Cup, has not featured in this series makes clear that England see spinning all-rounders Liam Livingstone and Mooen Ali as their best combination for conditions.
The recall of Chris Jordan to power-hit at No8 and bowl at the death set the stall out in terms of the kind of tournament England are expecting. Ben Duckett and Tom Hartley, left-armers with bat and ball, respectively, always had the look of squad options, whose variety might be needed in specific match-ups down the line.
The only obvious uncertainty about the make-up of the first XI, then, comes in the seam bowling, where only two of Archer, Wood and Reece Topley look likely to play. Given the injury record of all three, and the need for careful management, their rotation may work itself out in any case.
