Analysis: The Relentless Attacking England T20 Side

Looking for a reliable team to bet on in the T20 World Cup Super 12s? The England T20 team is worth all your money.

Ongama Gcwabe takes a closer look at what makes England look unbeatable in this tournament.

The 2021 T20 World Cup Super 12 fixtures got underway this past weekend with South Africa and Australia featuring in the curtain-raiser of the Super 12s.

Matches between England and West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka followed right after, while the India-Pakistan blockbuster on Sunday closed off a stellar weekend of T20 cricket.

Australia, England, Sri Lanka and Pakistan all won their fixtures this past weekend to start off their run for semi-final spots of the World Cup.

England’s victory over the weekend against a formidable Windies team was impressive and was a reminder to all teams in the tournament that England will be incredibly hard to beat.

Let’s look at this team very closely.

England T20 Team

England came into this tournament as the best white-ball team in the World in both short formats of the game.

They have the 2019 World Cup title to show for it and also an impressive number of T20I bilateral series wins leading up to the World Cup.

Here are five pointers that make England look unbeatable at the moment.

The Captain: Eoin Morgan

Probably the only player in the starting eleven that has not had good form before the World Cup is Eoin Morgan.

Yet his leadership skills in the recently concluded IPL have taken his team to the finals even though he himself wasn’t leading from the front as far as his batting is concerned.

His field placements, tactics, the rotation of bowlers and awareness of the game situation make him an MVP for any team he leads. His captaincy alone carries him into any starting eleven while his batting seems to come secondary.

In tournaments like the World Cup, a captain most aware of how batters around the world play the game is often the difference between teams that win and teams that lose the World Cup.

Morgan’s IPL and International experience make him that type of a captain. With his field placements and tactics on the field, he is able to negate any game plan star opposition batters have going into the game.

Attacking Brand of Cricket

England have adopted an aggressive approach to white-ball cricket for the past five years. T20 teams around the world, both international and domestic, have used this brand of cricket as a template due to the success it has brought England over the years.

Opening batters, Jason Roy and Jos Butler have T20I career strike rates of 145 and 139, respectively. This achievement makes them the most explosive pair in World Cricket at the moment.

Johnny Bairstow, Eoin Morgan and Moeen Ali have the ability to float in the batting lineup depending on the game situation. This is a crucial trait of this T20 team’s success and only a few other teams can replicate this at the level England are doing it.

Ali and Bairstow also have T20I career strike rates of over 130, making this batting order the most explosive at this World Cup.

Maintaining Match Winners

The one thing that the England management team has done well is to carry over the majority of squad members who won the 50 over format World Cup in 2019 into the T20 format.

Ten of the fifteen men in this squad were a part of the 2019 World Cup-winning squad, this means the majority of the England players at this T20 World Cup know how to win major ICC tournaments.

This gives England a huge advantage because they have players who understand how to win on the big stage.

Form Before T20 World Cup

I get it, the West Indies have more or less the same squad that won the 2016 T20 World Cup but they did not fire when they had to on Saturday against England.

The defining factor, in this case, is the fact that England had good form going into this T20 World Cup, something that the West Indies team did not quite have.

The team looks so stable. Every player knows exactly how they have to contribute to the team and it showed during their six-wicket victory on Saturday against West Indies.

Form is important, and England ticked their boxes as far as having good form going into this tournament.

Balance of the Squad

At the top of the order, Jason Roy and Jos Butler are undoubtedly the most consistently successful explosive opening pair in T20 cricket.

David Malan, Johnny Bairstow, Eoin Morgan and Moeen Ali completely complement the two openers. If needed, they can all fire and deliver the results for their teams.

Mark Wood, Chris Woakes, Tymal Mills, Adil Rashid, and Moeen Ali make up for a formidable bowling attack. Extreme pace with Wood and Mills balances the spin options of Rashid and Ali nicely.

England Upcoming Fixtures

England v Bangladesh 27^th  October

England v Australia 30^th  October

England v Sri Lanka 1^st  November

England v South Africa 6^th  November

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