FEEL THE POWER!
Stuart Broad exclusive on cricket’s Champions Trophy
THIS is a really exciting time for fans of England’s white- ball team and they will justifiably go into the ICC Champions Trophy as one of the favourites to win it. Teams who go on to win major limitedovers tournaments need match-winners in their top order and England certainly have those in abundance.
From one to seven, England have batsmen capable of winning a match on their own. This is undoubtedly the most powerful and explosive one-day batting line-up England have ever had, with players throughout the team capable of clearing the ropes.
The great thing about this team is that they are not reliant on one or two individuals to win a game and, even if someone like Jason Roy or Alex Hales fails four or five times on the trot, you know they will come good and produce a brilliant innings at some point.
There always seems to be someone who will step up and produce that match-winning innings. Captain Eoin Morgan is in superb form with the bat and that always helps as a skipper. He has a settled team to pick from and quality throughout. He looks very assured as captain now and will rightly go into the tournament with a look of confidence.
If England do go all the way to win it, which I truly believe they can, I’m fairly sure one of their spinners, Moeen Ali or Adil Rashid, will end up being among the players of the tournament.
The ICC have taken over the preparation of the pitches and, if the tournament in England four years ago is anything to go by, we can expect some fairly dry, almost sub-continental surfaces to play on. I’d expect spin bowling to play an important role in the outcome of the tournament. In that regard, India should definitely not be ruled out of contention with their brilliant duo, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
It really is remarkable how quickly white-ball cricket has evolved over the past decade or so. England posted 339 at Headingley on Wednesday and 330 again yesterday but hardly anyone raised an eyebrow. Scores like that have become pretty standard in 50-over cricket these days, when in the past anything above 250 was seen as a huge total.
There is no doubt batsmen now dominate limited- overs cricket but fans
clearly love seeing boundaries and the amount of fours and sixes being hit these days make for an incredibly entertaining spectacle.
For bowlers, if you go for anything more than about 20 in your first four or five overs you are almost certain to concede at least 70 runs in your allotted 10 overs. That is how much the game has changed.
Both pools are tough and England will be hoping they’ve qualified by the time they face Australia in the final game at Edgbaston.
The first game against Bangladesh is probably the one they’d want to open with but we know from our last World Cup game what tough opponents they are.
But England’s 50-over side have come on significantly since then and I’m confident they can go one better than we did four years ago when we lost in the final to India in a severely rain-affected game.