SAt the Board of Control for Cricket at the Indian headquarters in Mumbai, adjacent to the Wankhede Stadium, three days before the start of England’s World Cup campaign, Harry Brook was asked if he would captain a T20 team in the latest, even wilder-scoring version, against opponents looking to skin sixes with ungodly regularity. “Yes, you have to keep a cool head as possible,” he said. “You just have to try to be as calm as possible.”
In England’s last World Cup match in Wankhede, in the 2023 50-over tournament, calm and cool heads were exactly what they were missing. After mysteriously choosing to face South Africa one scorching hot afternoon, they essentially melted down; Heinrich Klaasen scored a century, England chased 400 and were rolled out for 170. It is an eerie memory mercifully carried by only a few members of the current squad, including just three survivors from that side (Brooks, Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid).
A 3pm (09.30 GMT) start, a shorter format and Mumbai’s pleasantly cool February evenings mean there should be no repeat of that particular torture when they open this World Cup against Nepal on Sunday, or in their second match, a 7pm (1.30pm) start against the West Indies at the same venue three days later. But they do everything they can to keep cool as the intervening hours tick away.
The team hotel is conveniently located a kilometer away from the Wankhede, a convenient booking that seemed to guarantee they would avoid commuting through Mumbai’s notoriously congested streets. But then they were allocated training facilities at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, which was a completely separate city and required a potentially three-hour round trip. The team management decided that the inconvenience of this trip was even worse than not training at all, especially when sessions on the eve of matches are often of shorter duration and intensity.
So Friday’s training, which Phil Salt took part in three days after suffering a back spasm – his fitness for the opener will be decided on Saturday – was rearranged for the evening at the Wankhede (which the US helpfully cleared, instead staging a voluntary session in Navi Mumbai). Because that stadium was busy with India’s match against the Americans on Saturday, England canceled their last training session entirely.
It seems like a wise decision on all counts, except one. Their last match in Sri Lanka was Tuesday, and this team is hardly short of match practice or impetus. “It’s not so much about momentum, it’s more about team unity and feeling strong in ourselves and having that confidence,” said all-rounder Will Jacks. “We’ve built a lot of trust in each other and I think the performance we’ve put in, not just winning but the way we’ve done it, really unites the group. Sometimes in the World Cup, obviously, we’re going to be under pressure and that’s something we can look back on and try to replicate.”
But the fact is that before those back-to-back wins in the white-ball series this winter, England had won little apart from a reputation for taking an extremely relaxed approach to all things cricket. Choosing to complete their World Cup preparations around the pool of their luxury hotel leaves them open to further criticism if Nepal, who had Friday off but will train in Navi Mumbai on Saturday, pull off a surprise by extending their own impressive form on Sunday.
Nepal has won 10 of its last 12 official T20 internationals, beating the West Indies (twice), Scotland and the Netherlands, and came into the tournament with wins in both warm-ups in Chennai, albeit against Oman and Canada. Rohit Paudel, their captain, is the only player to have played in all 42 matches in the last two years, but eight of the XI have played in 30 or more matches and form an experienced core. Sunday’s match is expected to be a near sell-out, with Mumbai’s large Nepalese expat community, estimated at more than 200,000 people, likely to make up the majority of what England may find to be a hostile crowd.
“We know a lot about each team, but it’s a team that we don’t see that often, so I think that’s a challenge in itself,” Jacks said. “You can never take anything for granted. I think we have to prepare as best as we can and we have to be 100%. You can’t take it easy in any match and expect to bring it up later in the group stage. Every match is crucial.”
The relatively early start means England avoid one issue that could help the underdogs in the tournament: Dew, which had a huge impact on the 2021 T20 World Cup and may do so again.
“It’s hard to predict. You play on days where you expect it to be dewy and then it isn’t and vice versa,” said Jacks, who sported a distinctive, freshly bleached haircut (“I’ve had the Eminem jokes asking me to rap a little bit. Some guys say it’s good, some say it’s terrible. I’ll probably have my hat or helmet on most of the time”). “But we know that in T20, unless it’s very clearly a bat-first scenario, most teams want to chase and Dew is obviously part of that.”
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