Kolkata, February 16 – England captain Harry Brook admitted that his team had not yet reached its peak form, despite securing qualification for the Super 8s with a hard-fought win over Italy in their ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Group C match at Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Monday.
“We haven’t played our best cricket, but at the end of the day, we’ve made it through, and we’re going to the next round, so we can be happy about that,” Brook said during the post-match presentation.
England posted 202/7 after being put to bat, with Will Jacks anchoring the innings with a composed half-century. However, Brook acknowledged that England’s batting unit had not been as consistent as they would have liked throughout the group stage.
“Yeah, it’s been a little bit of a trend so far in the competition. We haven’t been able to score the runs we would like as a batting unit, but that’s part of T20 cricket,” he said.
Highlighting the format's unpredictability, Brook stressed the need for continued intent, saying, “It’s a fickle game. One day you can score a hundred, and the next day you can get out first ball. We just have to keep being brave and taking our chances.”
England’s bowlers were challenged by Italy’s spirited chase, but Brook credited his team’s composure and fielding standards for ensuring they held their nerve. He reserved special praise for England’s death bowling, particularly Sam Curran, whose timely breakthroughs helped seal the victory.
“We fielded excellently. We bowled well too, and I never really had any doubts about that at the end with Sammy and Jamie in the last couple of overs. He (Sam) was amazing. He’s been excellent throughout the tournament so far, and we’ve managed to get through, but there have been some good performances, especially from him and Will Jacks, who stepped up when we were in tricky situations. That’s really good to see,” he added.
Brook also explained his decision to aggressively use Jofra Archer during the Power-play to gain early momentum. Looking ahead to the next phase of the tournament, he emphasised the importance of adapting quickly and improving England’s batting intent.
“When you want something, you want to try and get as much out of it as possible and try to put the opposition under pressure. We’ve probably done that before. We had a couple of weeks there, so we know what the conditions are like. So we just have to go back and do what we were doing whilst we were there, which is adapting,” the English captain said.
He reiterated the need for a more fearless approach with the bat and concluded by expressing hope that England would peak at the right time in the tournament, stating, “But as I said a minute ago, make sure we’re being brave with the bat, especially. You only have 20 overs to bat, and you have to try and score as many runs as possible. And that’s probably been our downfall in this group stage so far, is that we haven’t been brave enough and taken our chances as much as we felt. I hope that we peak at the right time, as you said, to still get ahead.”
