By Dominic Farrell
England captain Stuart Broad has called on his team to summon the spirit of 2010 following their opening World Twenty20 defeat to New Zealand.
A torrential thunderstorm meant only 5.2 overs of New Zealand’s response to 172 for six were possible in Chittagong – two balls more than the minimum needed for a Duckworth/Lewis Method result, under which the Black Caps triumphed by nine runs.
The result provided a parallel with the first match of England’s triumphant World T20 campaign four years ago, when they fell foul of a similar calculation despite posting an imposing 191 for five versus hosts West Indies.
It is something Broad and the six other members of England’s current squad who hoisted the trophy in the Caribbean do not need reminding of.
“The World Cup we won in 2010, we lost on Duckworth-Lewis in the first game, we scraped through against Ireland and then we won the next five games to win the World Cup," he said.
“We have to have a belief that it can happen again.”
Broad was given a few reasons to have such faith as Michael Lumb, Moeen Ali, Jos Buttler and Ravi Bopara all looked in fine touch with the bat against Brendon McCullum's side.
“It doesn’t particularly feel like a loss because we’ve done a lot of really good things in that game and I genuinely believe that if it had gone the full length we’d have stood a fantastic chance of winning,” Broad explained.
“We can take some real good things from today and we have to win our next three games. It’s simple. The way we’ve played tonight there’s certainly a possibility we can do that.
“We’re still lacking that one player to go on and get a big 60 or 70 but we’ve got some guys starting to fire.”
England are next in action against Sri Lanka on Thursday and Broad hopes to provide the sort of entertainment the players and spectators were cruelly denied by yesterday's weather at the ZACS Stadium.
“If we’d have gone the full 40 overs I think it would have been a fantastic game of cricket,” he said “172 was a very competitive total, I thought we played very nicely to do that.
“You see from our side, it’s quite bowler-heavy and that’s a strength of ours. So we’d have had a lot of options through that middle period.
“After the first five-and-a-bit overs both sides were very similar. We were 50-odd for one, I think, during the powerplay, so we can feel a little bit aggrieved to have that as a loss against our name because I think it would have been a very tight game.”