Adil Rashid, England’s legspinner, is confident that the team has the mindset of champions heading into June’s T20 World Cup, despite their failure to defend their 50-over crown in India last year. Rashid believes that the struggles in the 50-over format should not be related to their T20 title defense, emphasizing that the shorter format requires a different approach.
“The 50 overs was a completely different format,” Rashid said. “We had a poor run or whatever. It is what it is. We didn’t have the best tournament. We didn’t play well: bat, ball, as a team, as a unit – everything. But I think this is a completely different format where currently we’re world champions at that.”
“We’re confident. We’ve got the team, we’ve got the mindset, we’ve got the players, we’ve got the experience. If we go out there having the same belief, I think we’ll – hopefully – go all the way. We don’t look at it as ‘we had a bad World Cup’ because that’s a completely different format. It’s 50-over, that’s not T20. We try not to mix both together.”
England white-ball coach Matthew Mott echoes Rashid’s sentiments, expressing confidence in the squad and suggesting that captain Jos Buttler will rely more on intuition in his decision-making.
“We are confident,” Mott said. “I think we’ve got a good squad. It is going to come down to the team that reads the conditions best. I don’t think there is any hangover from the last World Cup. It’s a different format and we are going out there to try to win it.”
Mott also suggested that Jos Buttler will base his captaincy more on “gut feel” at the T20 World Cup than in previous years, with less reliance on planning and data.
“We’ll do our match-up beforehand, and he [Buttler] is armed with that,” Mott said. “He takes that quite seriously, but he wants to be more spontaneous out on the field.”
Rashid believes that approach will enable England to play with more freedom.
“Fifty overs is a lot longer game [than T20] with a lot more thinking, a lot more strategic things, a lot more planning involved,” he said. “T20 is quicker. You have planning to a certain extent but not like that, because you’ve got to go out and express yourself.”
“If you have too much planning with T20 cricket then you’re limiting yourself to, maybe, 180 or 170. But if you actually play with freedom, you can get to 250, 300.”
Rashid also praised the ECB’s new tape-ball competition, seeing it as a potential talent pathway, citing Haris Rauf’s success story as an example.
“Haris Rauf came in bowling quick with a tape ball, and next thing you know, he is playing for Pakistan and [in the] PSL,” Rashid said. “These things can happen. If you see somebody with an X-factor with a tape ball, but he’s actually bowling rockets and then you give him a cricket ball and you can do something similar, then you can fast-track them.”
