Kolkata, February 14 While England might not have performed at their best, captain Harry Brook believes this could be a blessing in disguise as the two-time champions aim to time their surge perfectly in the crucial stages of the T20 World Cup.
England narrowly avoided defeat against Nepal before losing to the West Indies on Saturday. Scotland threatened to score over 180 before they managed to restrict them to 152.
In reply, England struggled to reach their target, losing Phil Salt, Jos Buttler, and captain Brook for single-digit scores before Tom Banton's unbeaten 63 sealed a five-wicket victory with 10 balls to spare.
Brook acknowledged that England hadn't quite clicked, and perhaps that's not a bad thing at this stage of a global tournament.
"We haven't quite achieved the level we wanted so far in this competition, but hopefully, we can have a slightly easier run, starting with Italy on Monday or whenever we play. We haven't yet played our best cricket, but we're in a strong position," Brook said after the match.
"Things haven't quite clicked yet, but you don't want to start that too early in competitions like this, and hopefully, that can be the start of it against Italy when we play them in a couple of days."
Brook praised Banton, who was asked to take on a new role as No. 4, shifting from his usual top-order position in domestic cricket, and he adapted brilliantly to the situation.
With Salt and Buttler opening, England felt that No. 4 was the best slot for Banton.
"He's awesome against spin. His stats are among the best in the world, and you can't really break Joss and Salty up. I know that they haven't started the way they'd have liked, but their partnership at the top is phenomenal. We wanted to slot Bantz in there, and number four was really the only option," Brook said.
"He slotted into that No. 4 beautifully and played the situation and conditions perfectly, so he deserves all the success."
Known for his reverse slaps, Banton had to restrain his attacking range as Scotland plugged his favoured areas.
Having seen him as Under-19 captain, Brook praised his maturity.
"He's obviously matured as a player, as we've seen tonight. The way that he chased that total down, single-handedly, with a couple of cameos from (Jacob) Bethel and Sam (Curran). But yeah, he's played it beautifully.
"Obviously, everyone knows he's a very good reverse sweeper, so he's had to adapt his game a little to hitting different areas to stop them, because they're trying to stop him from hitting that reverse sweep. But he's a powerful player. He's got long levers. He can hit the ball out of any ground, and he's shown that tonight."
"We're 20-25 runs short: Berrington"
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For Scotland, the defeat was disappointing, said captain Richie Berrington, who felt they were 20-25 runs short after a collapse from a strong position.
Scotland now head to Mumbai to face Nepal, with mathematical hopes still alive to make the Super Eights, but the captain doesn't want to look too far ahead.
"We'll just have to wait and see what happens. We can't obviously look too far ahead, but our focus is going to be very much on how we move on from this game," the Scotland captain said.
"There's a lot of positives to take from the cricket we've played in the last three games, and if our execution keeps getting better, I think we'll have positive results.
"But we know it's going to be another tough game. It's going to be different conditions in Mumbai too, so it's about how quickly we can adapt to that.
"We've known and we've shown now when we perform well, we can put anyone under pressure, and we probably saw that in moments through that chase. I don't think it was straightforward at all," Berrington said.
"The dressing room's hurting a little bit now. We certainly had a lot of belief going into that game. If we would have played our best cricket and executed our skills well, we were right in there with a chance. I think we showed that for large parts of that game. Obviously, the first innings, we felt we were probably 20, 25 runs short," he added.
