Stuart Broad reflects on England's trip Down Under and looks ahead to the World Twenty20
By Dominic Farrell
Captain Stuart Broad believes there is clear room for improvement ahead of England’s World Twenty20 campaign in Bangladesh.
England concluded their tour of Australia with an 84-run loss at Sydney in the final T20 international of three.
The players will now enjoy a couple of weeks at home before heading to the Caribbean – the scene of England’s 2010 World T20 triumph – and beginning their preparations in earnest through six limited-overs encounters against West Indies.
“It has been a tough tour; there’s no hiding from that,” Broad toldecb.co.uk when reflecting on his time Down Under playing across all three formats. “As players, losing so many games, it hurts you.
“Why you train and work on your skills, it is to be able to beat the opposition and we’ve not been able to do that.
“You have to take some sort of positive out of it and as a Twenty20 side we’ve got six weeks together coming up.
“There’s obvious areas for improvement and, when you’ve got really obvious goals to improve on, you can actually improve pretty quickly with hard work.
“That’ll be three weeks in the Caribbean of hard work on our skills, on our craft, on our fitness – certainly on our fielding – to get us in the best shape to go to Bangladesh.”
Following the relentless experience of back-to-back Ashes series and associated one-day contests against Australia, Broad is certainly looking forward to the prospects of a break and some new faces in the opposing dressing room
“Even one, two nights at home can make a huge difference,” he said. “Australia have been ruthless, they’ve been relentless and they’ve been fantastic. They’ve really outplayed us.
“But a little break at home, a different opposition to play against – we’ve played against Australia for eight months and it will be nice to bowl at someone who’s not Australian.
“Hands up, they’ve outplayed us and it’s disappointing but there are opportunities that come out of losses and we have to take them."
The reverse at Stadium Australia completed a 3-0 loss in a series England entered with high hopes, but Broad insists his group still have what it takes to claim glory on the sub-continent in March.
He added: “This isn’t a reflection of our chances in Bangladesh. I’d expect conditions to be hugely different.
“Australia as a cricket nation have got on top of us this winter in the Test matches, in the one-dayers and the Twenty20s. The momentum of the results has carried through and it’s been very hard to stop.
“It’s not panic stations for the T20 side. We’ve got world-class players in that side and we just need to express ourselves better in the Caribbean leading forward to Bangladesh because it will be important to get a bit of momentum leading into that World Cup.”