Twenty20 World Cup: England put positive spin on record T20 loss to India

Tuesday 25 September 2012

England are writing off their record defeat against India as a blip which will have no bearing on their prospects at the "business end" of the ICC World Twenty20.

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David Clough

The defending champions' inability to deal with spin was key to their 90-run loss at the Premadasa Stadium – with wicketkeeper-batsman Craig Kieswetter's top score of 35 almost three times more than anyone else could muster in England's lowest ever Twenty20 total of 80 all out.

The consolation for England was that the loss came in their final Group A match, which counted for nothing between two teams which had already qualified for the next stage.Kieswetter, for one – a survivor of England's successful campaign two years ago in this tournament in the West Indies – is confident he and his team-mates will bear no scars when they tomorrow head east to Kandy, to play three super-eight matches at Pallekele – starting on Thursday."What's done is done; we did what we needed to do and qualified – and now we're through to the business part of the competition. Now you'll see the good teams put their hands up and actually put up performances that really matter," said Kieswetter. "It was a disappointing performance – we're human enough to say that and realise that obvious fact. We've played spin well; we've beaten Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan on the subcontinent before. It was just a bad performance. We're not getting too down about it. Confidence is still high; we're still playing some great cricket and we're pretty glad we've got that game out of the way at the best time possible."Protests outside the US Embassy in Colombo, near the hotel housing England and several other teams, over the anti-Islamic film which has caused unrest throughout the Muslim world, had no impact on England's practice at the P Sara Oval, where captain Stuart Broad acknowledged more specialist batting tutorials against spin might be on the agenda.Meetings have also been held in Colombo between out-of-favour batsman Kevin Pietersen, in Sri Lanka as a broadcasting pundit, and ECB top brass. But messages have been mixed as to how those negotiations have gone.England must therefore cut their cloth without him – which Kieswetter believes they can do – although it was not prodigious turn which did for England, as off-spinner Harbhajan Singh returned career-best figures, but his deception and skill, combined with a surface which did not allow reaction time after batting misjudgments."We've got to be adaptable to the wickets," Kieswetter said. "We realise that; we've highlighted it and we're obviously going to learn from that. The ball's a bit more unpredictable here – it either spins or it doesn't – it's not as predictable as in England."* West Indies will be England's first Super Eight opponents after rain prevented a result in last night's final ICC World Twenty20 Group B match against Ireland at the Premadasa Stadium.

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Twenty20 World Cup: England put positive spin on record T20 loss to India

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