Now is the time to showimprovement of last 10 months

FIVE years on from our last adventure, it’s great to be back in India. Once again, the locals have welcomed us into their world. I love India and the Indian people, love the smell of fresh food being cooked on the roadside, the colours splashed across everything and the fact that Indian people always seem to smile.

They make use of what they have here. It’s a very humbling thing to see. We have been in Dharamsala since Tuesday, after a week of training in Mohali. On Thursday morning, we visited the Dalai Lama’s temple, which was a pretty incredible thing to see. But we can’t forget why we are here. And that is to compete in the World Twenty20.

We are fortunate to have both warm-up games here as it gives us the best preparation before our first group game against Oman this Wednesday.

They are an ever-improving side as we saw last July in the qualifiers in Dublin. They have some dangerous players who can score runs at a quick rate.

They will be up for this game, too. They view it as a chance to claim a scalp and show the world what they can do. We are aware that’s how teams like Oman now see us, because it wasn’t so long ago that we were in their shoes.

While it was disappointing to lose to Zimbabwe yesterday, we aren’t going to get too downbeat about it. We did start the campaign pretty well with a comprehensive 10 wicket win over Hong Kong on Thursday. We restricted them to 120 in their 20 overs with Tim Murtagh claiming two wickets and everyone else chipping in with one.

We had two run-outs, both spectacular, but the one from Stuart Thompson (right) who, after bowling the ball, which the batsman hit to his right hand side, dived full length, spun around on his stomach and in one movement was accurate with his throw to beat the despairing batsman.

Our bowlers, with the addition of Chaminda Vaas (ex Sri Lanka bowler) as coach, have been executing our plans with confidence over the past seven T20I’s. I’m confident in our skillset. If we can keep our composure we can make it out of our initial group.

The gap between the nations ranked 10th to 15th is narrowing. Most are now simply focusing on T20 while we are competing across three fronts. That’s not an excuse, it’s just a fact, but in my opinion, it shouldn’t prove to be difficult. As a team, and an organisation, we want to be competitive across the three formats.

It’s been a difficult transition for John Bracewell, taking over from Phil Simmons. Let’s be honest, it wasn’t going to easy. Simmo was in charge for eight years and had huge success during that time. But that only came after a slow start. New coaches need time to build their own team, own culture and own brand of cricket.

John’s coaching is different from Phil’s. I think it took the team (or individuals) a while to come to terms with the fact it wasn’t Phil’s team anymore. That’s normal. But the team has grown even more over the past 10 months. Some of the younger players are starting to develop into excellent cricketers with more experienced cricket brains. I love T20. I think everyone knows that. It is my favourite format, I’m not going to hide that but this World Cup isn’t the same as last year. We were in Australia and New Zealand for six weeks, whereas this time round we could be flying home a week after it starts. But we will give it our best shot. My hopes for this tournament are high. We have the team, and the players to get through. Once we are there anything can happen. It only takes one man to turn a T20 game in your favour, and we have the firepower within our squad to be successful.