Early losses prove costly as England come up short

Friday 28 September 2012

Stuart Broad, the England captain, urged his team to pay more attention at the start of future innings as the loss of two early wickets contributed to a 15-run defeat to the West Indies in the ICC World Twenty20 Championship.

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David Clough

The holders were chasing 179 for five after Johnson Charles (84) and Chris Gayle (58) clubbed half-centuries, but the loss of Craig Kieswetter and Luke Wright for nought from three balls put England on the back foot right at the start of their chase.

Eoin Morgan (71 not out) and Alex Hales (68) did their best to rescue an unlikely victory, but Broad's men must now win their remaining games, against Sri Lanka and New Zealand, to progress.Broad said: "We had to regroup; losing two wickets in that first over hurt us a lot. The way Eoin Morgan played got us back into the game. We were happy with our bowling effort, maybe 20 more runs would have been about par."We're really disappointed – I think it's a missed opportunity not to win – but there are some positives to take, as well. Eoin's got amazing skill to find the boundaries when guys are still back and he's been fantastic for us in this format of the game. The surface played pretty well; it was a batsman's paradise. It was quite hard to stop the boundaries flowing in that middle period, but I thought Samit Patel, in particular, came back pretty well."With the bowling effort, I think we were just below par, so we're disappointed not to have chased that. It's pretty clear what we have to do. We've done some good things tonight but we've just fallen short and we've got to stop losing early wickets like that, because it's hurting us."Darren Sammy, the West Indies captain, said: "I think it was a very good performance and we backed ourselves to set a target. The way Charles and Gayle played at the top really set it up for us."We knew how good the wicket was and it took good work from the bowlers to defend it. Looking at all the games played here, we were definitely looking for 200."Once the batsmen get going the margin for error is quite slim and Ravi [Rampaul] setting us up from the top of the innings with two wickets really helped us."We saw how England played against India, so we decided to maximise our spinners. [Andre] Russell didn't get a bowl and I only bowled one over because the plan was to use more spin."Sammy reserved special praise for 23-year-old St Lucian Charles who, without having scored a century in any form of professional cricket, stayed the course to record his maiden Twenty20 international half-century."It was good to see the way he played," Sammy added. "He started off slowly but he constructed a very good innings, getting his first 50 in Twenty20. Hopefully, he can continue doing that for us."

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Early losses prove costly as England come up short

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