Why I’m looking forward to Ashes tour – with my family
Hit was crucial to get clarity about travel restrictions and now we can turn our focus on two massive challenges
Every English player wants to be a part of an Ashes tour – it is on the bucket list. It is the one tour I have never been on so that ambition to get selected and to experience what it is like was burning brightly. For any English player, that is the one tour you want to experience.
My issue about going to the Ashes was never about cricket – it was simply that I have a young family. They cannot get out to the T20 World Cup – it is too early because my second child, Margot, was born only last month. So if families were not allowed to travel to Australia that would have meant spending five months apart from my family.
I probably would not have been comfortable doing that. It is a really tricky one because I know I am not going to play cricket for ever, but equally you want to be able to take your family with you.
The last few weeks have been quite difficult with lots of unknowns. We have all wanted clarity around what the tour would look like and whether families were able to go and stuff like that.
People were asking questions, understandably, but we could only answer them with the information we had at that time – there were so many different ideas as to what it would be like, what the rules would be in the bubble and if families would be allowed to
travel. It was important to have all options open, and have the information to be able to make a decision.
But luckily it has all been sorted out and everyone has been able to commit to the tour. I am really excited for the trip, and very glad to be able to travel with my family, who are able to come on the whole tour.
Now it will be about trying to really switch the focus – going from the stuff no one wants to talk about to looking ahead to what is probably the biggest challenge you can face as an England Test team. That is a really exciting place to be.
But for now there is a World Cup to win. It is going to be a huge challenge to have a World Cup and an Ashes straight after. It is really important to compartmentalise them – naturally there is lots of talk around an Ashes series and it is grabbing the headlines. But it is very important to be in the here and now. We are desperate to play well as a team here and do something special.
I played in the Indian Premier League in the UAE at this time last year, which is helpful in terms of knowing what to expect in the World Cup. One of the big lessons was the importance of the powerplay – which is great for me as an opener.
The powerplay is when the ball is at its hardest and is probably when the pitch is playing at its best. It is certainly an area that will be really important with both bat and ball.
As a batter, it is about trying to attack it in the right way. The wickets get a bit slower later, so it is not as easy to come in in the middle order and start to hit straight away. A few guys describe it as being like the air almost going out of the ball – it does not go as far as it gets a little bit older.
The powerplay is certainly a time where you are looking to be aggressive and take advantage of the fielding restrictions. You do not really need to search too much for it. If you can get good contact on the ball and find the gaps you can play pretty traditional cricket shots and score at a good rate because of the fielding restriction. That is how I tend to try to start my innings, but then if I feel like I need to go to an even more aggressive mode or try to create a few more things, then I try to do that.
The West Indies, our opponents in the opening game, really back their six-hitting when they need it. They can soak up pressure knowing that they need to hit a certain amount of sixes in the last four or five overs to win the game. They trust themselves that they can do that. They do not need to take excess risks in other areas because they feel they can hit sixes when they need to. It is a great mindset in T20.
I now have the belief that there is no reason why I could not hit two sixes in a row at some point. That gives you such a different outlook on how quickly the game can change. It is a belief thing to take pressure away from yourself.