Pressure on India and Dilshan’s genius

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The fact that we came back so strongly against Pakistan last week after the defeat to Holland gives us a good precedent in preparing to play India today at Lord’s. Seeing India lose to West Indies reminded us that they are beatable and that, as champions, there’s an enormous pressure on them to stay in this fantastic tournament. More than there is on England, I think. The expectations on India are very high. We certainly believe that if we go out with the same fearless approach we showed against Pakistan, we’ll beat India.

After losing to South Africa in the first Super 8s game on Thursday, we had Friday off. I’ve just moved into my new flat so I spent the day moving wardrobes and painting walls. I mean, I was taking it easy: I’m not going to get injured shifting furniture in the middle of a World Cup and end up as a quiz question.

The team are all together in a hotel but I live close to Lord’s now and since we spend so much time on the road anyway, it was nice to spend a day at home. It was relaxing to get out of cricket mode. And in a big tournament, that can be important.

Saturday, we trained. We had a good game of football to start with, then some individual preparation. Once you’re in the tournament it’s about mental preparation. The football brings a competitive edge out of people and helps us to relax and not get uptight. Who’s the best footballer in the England side? I’d say… Jimmy Anderson. He’s in the mould of, well, a Frank Lampard.

After football, we worked on our individual skills; I just work on my basics throughout the competition, keep me ticking over.

The tournament has been awesome. I love Twenty20 anyway - but turning up mid-afternoon and playing Twenty20 in front of a packed house every time, with the support we’re getting. It’s phenomenal. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Looking at the other teams, Tillekeratne Dilshan is an absolute phenomenon. I was watching him a lot during the IPL. The way he plays, with so many unusual shots might make people bracket him with my style; I’m just fascinated to see a right-hander do it. I’m not sure he actually has all that many shots that I don’t have: I’ve used the flip that puts the ball straight back over the wicket-keeper’s head, for example. So I think it’s not so much how he plays his innovative shots, technically, that interests me, as the times that he plays them and the way he has uses them to string such a good run of innings together at this level.

He’s obviously a very good player at the top of the order, full-stop, but then given time, he can innovate too. I suppose people might associate those sweeps and flicks and flip shots with batting against the spinners in the middle overs but in some ways it’s easier to play them when there’s pace on the ball in the early overs.

Did we feel as if South Africa were playing a different game to us on Thursday? Not really. They’re not invincible. Beforehand we had talked about the last time we had played them, last summer when we beat them 4-0: as a team, you can take confidence from those sort of series. Obviously they’re a strong side but on a different day I think we could have beaten them.

After we lost Kevin and we were 25/3, Owais and Paul got a bit of a partnership going but after that we struggled. It can happen. Some people have said that our shot selection might have been better but I think that’s unfair. The wicket was pretty slow and losing wickets regularly meant that new batsmen had to work out a way of moving the game on as soon as they came in. And the South Africans have two very good one-day spinners, in Botha and van der Merwe. And you don’t want to come in and start smashing it about straight away - but as it happened, every release-shot we tried didn’t come off. That can happen in Twenty20 cricket.

Wayne Parnell is turning out to be one of the bowlers of the tournament. I played against him for Middlesex against Kent early in the season. He doesn’t swing it or reverse it like Umar Gul. He just hits the deck hard: in some ways, nothing out of the ordinary, but he bowls those angles, left-arm over the wicket, which makes the difference.

We had a debrief after the game. The captain and the coach both spoke and then other players chipped in. Having not played, it’s difficult to give an opinion or make a valid point so I tend to keep quiet.

On Sunday, I’ll get to Lord’s about halfway through the second innings of the first game. Ireland are playing Sri Lanka so maybe a little bit earlier. I’ve been in touch with a couple of the Irish guys during the tournament. The captain William Porterfield, is my best mate and we went for dinner the night before the South Africa game. We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten - I played for Ireland under-13s when I was 10 and he was the captain.

William’s obviously with Gloucestershire, but most of the Irish team are still amateurs - they work all week and only play cricket on a Saturday, so that does give them a real passion about their cricket. To find themselves in the middle of this amazing tournament instead of working at their day jobs gives them a real drive: any ‘professional’ team that shows any weakness can come unstuck against that. I saw it when we lost to Holland - the sheer passion that the Associate countries can bring to a tournament like this. That’s how the upsets happen.

We’ve had a bad game, then a good game, then a bad game… so we’re due a good game again today against India. Everyone’s optimistic about the talent we have in the squad and our chances of getting things going again.

Previous entries

Losing to Netherlands, beating Pakistan

How and why I play those Twenty20 shots

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