Mike Atherton: Ascendant England can end old foe Pakistan’s date with destiny

Ushering the wives and girlfriends out of the Edgbaston dressing room, he told Eoin Morgan’s players a hard truth. Why, he wanted to know, were they celebrating as though they had won the damn tournament? It was, he reminded them, only the semi-final. This is why, he said, Australians think you Poms don’t ever win anything. “Jeez, thanks Trev,” Mark Wood recalled thinking, in the recently released documentary of the 2019 final, The Greatest Game.

There was no danger of Matthew Mott, Bayliss’s successor, needing to be a mood hoover after the stunning defeat of India on Thursday evening in Adelaide. There was no frothy exuberance - though the players enjoyed the moment hugely - rather a sense of a job not yet complete. The 2019 team were breaking the mould and in uncharted territory then. While England are under new leadership here, a core of that side remains: six of this squad now have a chance to become World Cup winners again.

Among the present squad, some pleasant stories await. Moeen Ali did not play in the final in 2019 - he was the first from the bench to run on to the pitch at the end, zigzagging around deliriously like Brownian motion - but is one of the first names on the team sheet in T20 and an important second-in-command to Jos Buttler. It was noticeable, during India’s innings, how involved Ali was - even though not required to bowl - constantly making small adjustments to the field.

David Willey is unlikely to play, but few would begrudge him the potential of a winner’s medal. He was an ever-present squad member in the build-up to the 50-over World Cup but missed out at the last minute when Jofra Archer became available. Willey took his demotion uncomplainingly and has continued to present a strong case for inclusion in the months and years that have followed.

The evident delight showed by those who did not play three years ago will remind the unlucky few in the same boat now of the need to enjoy the occasion. It seems unlikely that such a short turnaround, for example, will enable Dawid Malan or Wood to recover from injuries in time. There is often a Jimmy Greaves-type hard luck story among those on the bench.

Injuries or not, England are growing in confidence. They have played the past three games on a precipice, knowing that one misstep would result in their elimination, but they feel this has sharpened their competitive instincts and brought their character to the fore. After the washout against Australia, they have improved with each match, the stunning defeat of India by ten wickets the most joyous evidence of that.

As in 2019, when Jason Roy returned from injury to kickstart a journey in danger of stalling, the opening partnership has been the foundation from which everything has flowed, but in the praise that followed the performance by Alex Hales and Buttler, one or two others flew under the radar. Adil Rashid, for example, bowled superbly, as he did in Sydney against Sri Lanka, and will be a key man in the middle overs, assuming Wood is again unfit.

Buttler’s form and flexibility and sound judgment at the toss - batting first against New Zealand, chasing against India - have leant a growing confidence that the wobbles of the summer are long behind them. Since the New Zealand match, when he captained imaginatively, he has looked increasingly assured in the field.

A note of caution around England’s prospects tomorrow (Sunday) arrives from three concerns. The first is that Pakistan are a fine T20 team, despite their initial stumbles. They own, by common consent, the competition’s most potent bowling attack, made more incisive by the improving form and fitness of Shaheen Shah Afridi. Pace is their strength, with Afridi bolstered by Haris Rauf’s thunderbolts, and the skiddy reverse swing of Naseem Shah and Mohammad Wasim.

They can be a handful in a variety of conditions. In their semi-final against New Zealand in Sydney they struck with new ball and old, and clearly enjoyed the reverse swing from the midpoint of the innings. But Melbourne is likely to be different - damper, greener and, if the weather holds, pacier than Sydney, and they have the speed to exploit that too. The batting has been improved by the selection of the fearless 21-year-old, Mohammad Haris, but looks less deep and less dangerous than England’s.

Second, is the way they play their cricket. They are a team who play on instinct and feel, and when they get on a roll, watch out. Watch out in the field for what the best writer on Pakistan cricket, Osman Samiuddin, has called tamasha - a commotion - or haal - a kind of spiritual energy that sometimes binds the team when all is seemingly lost and forces submission from the opposition. Matthew Hayden, their Australian assistant coach, has bought into this, talking recently of the “magic” that can happen from nowhere.

Third, is a strong feeling in their camp that they are destined to follow the triumph of three decades ago with another. The similarities to the 1992 World Cup triumph under Imran Khan are uncanny: same country, same city, same opponents, same semi-final result, and same group-stage struggles, with elimination never far away.

Flicking through the recently released autobiography of Wasim Akram, man of the match in that 1992 final for his brilliant swing bowling, is to be reminded of how much has changed. Wasim recalled that the warm-ups before the game were so relaxed, he ended up giving throwdowns to Neil Fairbrother, his teammate from Lancashire, who was in the England team. There was the small matter of prize money, too, just dollars 1,800 to each player.

Tomorrow (Sunday), there will be dollars 1.6 million (about pounds 1.36 million) to be shared by the winners, out of a total pot of dollars 5.6 million. Mind you, some things won’t change: Wasim recalled that when they returned to Pakistan after winning, the journey from Lahore airport to the Pearl Continental hotel, which ought to have taken 20 minutes, took seven hours, such were the crowds. Should Pakistan defy the odds and repeat that triumph, a similar level of adulation is assured again.

What would a victory, and a third World Cup across formats, mean for England? Without putting a downer on tomorrow’s (Sunday’s) match, there can be little comparison with the 2019 triumph, given that the 50-over format remains a greater test of a team’s skill and resilience; given the long wait for a 50-over triumph; given the four-year build-up, which allowed time for the narrative to build; given where England were four years before that, and given where the match was played.

England have won the T20 World Cup before, in 2010 in the Caribbean, and this is the second T20 World Cup in the space of two years, which has added to a slight sense of overkill. Victory would be significant, of course, not least with a broad Sunday-morning audience benefiting from a combination of free-to-air and satellite television. It feels bigger than 2010, because T20 was not as well established then, but not as big as 2019.

Success is now expected to a greater degree than before. Win or lose we are in a golden age of English one-day cricket.

-The Times

Originally published as Mike Atherton: Ascendant England can end old foe Pakistan’s date with destiny