England’s habit of ‘winning ugly’ in tight games gives them T20 World Cup hope

Another win, and if England emerged from the Wankhede after Sunday’s fraught victory over Nepal without much of a strut to their step, they did so with two points in their pockets and the bandwagon still rolling. They have now won 11 of their 12 completed T20s in the last year, and in their last two games have been reminded that winning ugly can be more powerful than winning easy.

“I wouldn’t have wanted it to be as close as it was to be honest,” said Jacob Bethell. “But this is my first World Cup. Watching previous World Cups you want to get those little tricky games, to get a feel for them and just know you’ve got the confidence to get over the line in them. I think it’s not going to do us any harm to go through that.”

It was a superficially underwhelming display, in which some of the team’s most reliable performers – most notably Adil Rashid and Jofra Archer – struggled. But now there will be more confidence that even when the stars fail to shine, others will step up. And though England are still a long way from even thinking about winning this tournament, they also know that edging such encounters can be the mark of a champion.

It is rare for any team to win a World Cup without coming through at least one such game. The 2024 champions India looked to be on their way to defeat by Pakistan in their second match before Jasprit Bumrah conceded just three in its penultimate over. In 2022 England found themselves with no margin for error after losing a rain-affected game to Ireland and, in their final group match, edged past Sri Lanka with two balls to spare. In 2021 Australia needed only 119 to beat South Africa in their first game, and managed it again with two balls remaining.

It had been notable that, in the days before their World Cup campaign got under way, the one game of their recent run that England kept referring to was not the 146-run walloping of South Africa in Manchester last September, or the stroll to victory over Ireland in Malahide with six wickets and nearly three overs to spare, but the time they defended a meagre 128 in Pallekele.

It had, it’s true, been their most recent outing, its memories the freshest. But it was also a ropey performance, rescued only in its final overs when they contrived to make Sri Lanka, from the apparently serene position of needing 39 off the last 42 balls with six wickets in hand, crumble. Bethell called it “a nice tight finish”. Sometimes the most savoured scorelines are not those secured in most style.

“That game was awesome,” Harry Brook said, speaking in his Mumbai hotel before the start of this World Cup. “One thing we said after that was that the belief was there for every single one of them. We were well behind the game at one point. We were at drinks and we all just went, ‘Look lads, anything can happen here. We get a couple of wickets and it all changes.’ We all had that belief to go out there and win that game.”

What Brook cannot have realised was how soon he would need to tap in to that reserve of confidence. Just five days later, and 2,000km away, his team was back on the field, talking at another drinks break, and once again reminding each other how quickly things might change.

“We just spoke about how there’s a long time left to go in the game. Six overs,” Will Jacks said. “Everything happens quickly in T20 cricket. Six overs is still a very long time. After that we bowled two very good overs and all of a sudden we were ahead. That’s how quickly the game can change. I think Harry was very good there at keeping level-headed. Jos [Buttler] spoke as well. I think those experienced guys are crucial when those pressure situations come around.”

Those drinks were taken after 14 overs of Nepal’s run chase. England, and many neutral observers, had believed their total of 184 was enough to secure a comfortable victory, but Nepal had just plundered 19 runs from what turned out to be Adil Rashid’s final over. From there England turned the game around with two wickets, and 16 runs, from the next three overs only to surrender control again. They found themselves with six balls to go, defending just 10, with the ball in the hands of Sam Curran.

“That last game in Sri Lanka gave us confidence,” Bethell said. “And when you’ve got match-winners in the team like Sam – he’s a match-winner, it doesn’t matter what he’s done previously in the game or games prior, if you need him to come and win you a game, he’s there for you.”

For Liam Dawson, finally playing a World Cup game at the age of 35 and at his fifth tournament as a squad member or travelling reserve, it had already been a memorable day. “We’d tried to play a good game but fair play to Nepal, they had us on the ropes,” he said. “It was far from a perfect performance, but you come to a World Cup and you just want to win. Sometimes you win ugly – you don’t play your best, but you just win.”

For England Sunday was not a confident first step on their World Cup journey, but it might have been a useful one. “I think winning ugly is a great trait. It’s incredibly difficult to replicate that experience that you get,” said Jacks. “A game like that, where we potentially weren’t expecting it to go down to the last ball and it has – hopefully when we get in that situation in the rest of the tournament, which we definitely will at some stage, we’ll be able to look back on this experience and take that with us.”

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