Josh Hazlewood suggesting a possible manipulation of the Net Run Rate to engineer England’s group-stage exit sparked brouhaha so much so that a good portion of Matthew Mott’s press conference ahead of the Oman game was spent dwelling on the Australian’s comments. Mott admitted that England could only hope to take it as a joke and concentrate on the games ahead.
Heading into the World Cup as one of the favourites, England have been stumbled early resulting in a nervy qualification situation. The initial washout to Scotland and a comprehensive defeat to Australia by 36 runs compounded by a poor NRR of -1.80 has made progress tricky. It remains to be said, however, that it is not doom and gloom for England with Oman and Namibia their remaining two opponents and they would fancy their chances to get two massive wins.
Oman come into this fixture without a win in any of the three games they have played. A thumping defeat to Scotland who chased 151 in merely 13.1 overs has knocked them out of the tournament. However, with pride on the line and the opportunity to play spoilsport against the defending champions will be a big motivation.
When: England vs Oman, 7:00 PM GMT (June 13), 3:00 PM local time, 00:30 AM IST (June 14)
Where: Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, North Sound, Antigua
What to expect: The last two games at this venue have produced decent batting strips with both Scotland and Australia chasing their targets with plenty of overs to spare. There is however, a slight 20% chance of rain during the game and the team winning the toss would prefer to bowl first.
Team Watch
England
In the aftermath of the Australia defeat, Reece Topley is set to be included in the XI in place of Mark Wood who has gone wicketless in the first two games. No other changes are expected in the XI.
Probable XI: Phil Salt, Jos Buttler (c/wk), Will Jacks, Jonny Bairstow, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Reece Topley
Oman
Pratik Athavale and Ayaan Khan had decent outings with the bat for Oman who managed to post 150 against Scotland but the rest of the batters have failed to come to the party for the Gulf nation. The bowlers were decent against Namibia and for over 10 overs against Australia.
Probable XI: Kashyap Prajapati, Pratik Athvale (wk), Naseem Kushi, Aqib Ilyas (c), Zeeshan Maqsood, Ayaan Khan, Khalid Kail, Naseem Kushi, Mehran Khan, Shakeel Ahmed, Kaleemullah, Bilal Khan
Did you know?
– This is the first match between England and Oman across any format.
– Aqib Ilyas has six 50+ scores from 25 T20I innings since November 2022
– Jonny Bairstow has a poor record in T20 World Cups. In 12 innings, he has scored only 92 runs at an average of 10.22 and at a strike-rate of 91.09
What they said:
“We’ve still got things in our control and that’s all you can ask for. We’ve got two more games. We’re treating this game with Oman in isolation. They’ve got our full attention. We’re going to prepare really well for that. And then see what happens in this game. If we get into a position where we’re in a dominant position and can push hard, we will. If we have to scrap and fight and get the two points, we will as well. So, we’ll just keep an open mind, as we always will. But essentially, we want to play that brand of cricket. I think we had glimpses of it the other day. I thought we started well with the bat, but to get a full performance in is really important. Get that on-field confidence. I think we’re really close, but obviously it’s been a bit of a disjointed tournament so far.” – England Coach Matthew Mott on England’s preparation against Oman.
“Yeah, we will try to. We will try here, as I said before, that we are trying to prove the point, but it’s not a fluke that we just came in the World Cup from an Asian country…. We are trying to get [give] some [a] good fight and surprise them because this is what happened to the bigger teams, I might think that they are not going to take [it] easy but for us we will try to give them a good fight because we have nothing to lose. All we have here is to gain some good confidence and maybe a win to end the positive side from this World Cup.” – Oman all-rounder Ayaan Khan
