England’s Ben Stokes celebrates after running out Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Thirimanne during their ICC World Twenty20 cricket match on Saturday
Captain Eoin Morgan is hoping that England’s experience of twice winning in New Delhi will give it an advantage against New Zealand in the first semifinal of the World Twenty20 on today.
England, which defeated Sri Lanka by 10 runs and Afghanistan by 15 runs here, takes on a team that has won all its four league games at different venues and plays in the capital for the first time.
“We’ve become quite settled in Delhi,” Morgan said. “We’ve got fantastic support, fantastic following and have grown used to the pitch a lot more than the first game we were here. It’s probably a little bit drier and completely different circumstances to the one at Wankhede [in Mumbai].”
England’s first win was with a 230-run chase against South Africa at the Wankhede Stadium before the two close victories in New Delhi, which Morgan feels highlighted the depth in the team as contributions came from different quarters.
“I think it shows the amount of character that we have within the group. I think we haven’t had to repeat the same thing twice, so it shows different sides to every person’s personality. I think that shows the group as a whole can be very powerful if you play together,” Morgan said.
“We’ve come into this tournament with an open mindedness about the conditions that we come up against. And I think that will be no different tomorrow. We are playing on a fresh wicket which has a really good covering of grass,” he added.
New Zealand started with a 47-run victory on a turner at Nagpur against India, which was considered the favorite coming into the tournament and the team’s adaptability gives captain Kane Williamson a lot of confidence.
“England have been fortunate to play here a couple of times but anything can happen in T20 cricket,” Williamson said. “We have gone with ‘horses for courses’ in the tournament… we will look closely at the conditions before deciding on the composition of our side.” MDT/AP
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