Jason Roy admitted that emotions got the better of him after he reminded the world of his class with a knock of 113 in England's first ODI with South Africa.
Jos Buttler's team were left to rue a wasteful collapse which saw them fall to a 27-run defeat, but one bright spot was the return to form of opener Roy following his turbulent 2022. He scored just 335 runs in 11 ODI innings, and 101 of them came in a single innings against the Netherlands.
Furthermore, he was dropped from the England T20 squad after hitting only 206 runs in 11 appearances, and was forced to watch Buttler and co life the World Cup from afar. His form in the SA20 in the lead-up to the series has also been underwhelming, but his 91-ball knock in Bloemfontein dispelled the notion he was a fading force.
"I'm feeling very good [today], I actually didn't sleep that well – I had about five hours sleep," he explained, via The Cricketer. "I was overcome with a few emotions and stuff like that, it's been a turbulent few months."
Roy celebrated wildly after bringing up his ton with a boundary off Anrich Nortje, and explained what fuelled his show of passion: "It's been a horrible year. [The celebration] was a little bit of anger around it all just because I set everything to the back of my mind and locked a few things away in a cupboard.
"And I went out and played the way I have played throughout my career. I was frustrated I hadn't got to that mindset earlier, but it was a nice feeling."
In October, double white-ball world champions England will defend their 50-over crown in India, with now shortage of batting depth available to coach Matthew Mott. But Roy, 32, knows he still as much to do to be on the plane.
"I've played a lot of games in my career, been around for a while now, and even after a bad year, you can get forgotten quite quickly," he said. "Hopefully [I will play the World Cup] but it's one step at a time. It's one game into a series, one game into the year in international cricket, so I've got to keep scoring runs and just building this team to the place where we were at back in 2019."
Roy played a key role in what has become an iconic cricketing moment, when England captured a first ODI World Cup on home soil almost four years ago. In the now famous Super Over, it was his throw to keeper Buttler which led to the run out of New Zealand batter Martin Guptill from the final ball of the Super Over.
