Guyana: England coach Mathew Mott blew the bugle for the semifinal against India declaring that “our tournament really starts tomorrow. The best of our cricket is ahead of us.”
England has survived what he called “the treachery of the group stages” and was on the brink of being ousted from the tournament early, despite being the defending champion. “We have been under the pump and performed in patches till now but now it is all about the unique challenge before us. No one remembers the group matches or the Super 8s. Getting through the gritty, determined hard part of group stages is a relief,” he said, stressing the “semi is where we start our campaign.”
Much like Rohit Sharma earlier in the day, Mott dismissed the venue advantage for India talk. “No one comes with an advantage or disadvantage into a semifinal match. He who adapts the quickest goes all the way,” he said.
Talking about conditions and adaptability, he said England has the huge advantage of having Caribbean hero Kerion Pollard in the dressing room. “Pollard has intel on all the islands. He is a great asset for us and knows all about the conditions at all venues,” Mott said.
Talking about the leadership and playing qualities of Jos Butler, Mott said, he is an asset in the making continuously. “Jos' leadership keeps evolving every day. As a player, he's got two world titles under his belt which not many people have.
“He's captained one and there's an opportunity for us to go further in this tournament, one that we're all relishing. He in particular looks at the top of his game and when he's leading from the front and batting like that, every side feeds off that. The most important thing is how much of our bowling groups evolved under his captaincy," Mott said.
India’s knockout stage vulnerabilities have kept them away from lifting the Cup. It’s been 13 years since it lifted the 50-over trophy and 17 long years since it sipped from the T20 Cup. But Mott said that does not take away from the brilliant unit Sharma helms.
"What India has done incredibly well over the last few years is put themselves in semi-finals contention and the flip side to that is when you don't win people look at that as a negative. The consistency that they've shown over a length of time shows what a great group of players they are. When you get to the semi-final stage, every team and the four teams out here, all think they have a chance to win it. And there's small margins. So, if you take those key moments at the right time, you get over the line, if you don't, you go home," he said.
Guyana is known for being a spin paradise, but Mott said it has been read wrongly christened and everything depends on the conditions around it. It is more to do with a lack of bounce rather than spin, he asserted.
For him, spinners are effective because of two things – the conditions and then the wicket that is helping them. But it is largely the sheer quality of the spinners playing in this tournament” that makes them such a serious factor in the T20 format, he stressed.
"The perception that this ground spins is actually not right. If you look at the spin numbers, it's not the biggest spinning ground, but spin is used a lot, so it's obviously effective. It's more to do with the lack of bounce. So clearly if you're bowling spin and you're bringing the wickets into play, it's harder to get away. If you stay there, which both spin bowling units will do, they'll make it harder for the batsman to access behind the wicket so you can shut off certain parts of the ground. That's probably why it's been effective and the sheer quality of the spin that's on display is come to the fore throughout the tournament," he said.
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