set England the pace as stars align for title tilt

Bowlers and batsmen all look in fine fettle in win over Pakistan ahead of Cup defence

- Malik Ouzia

BEFORE one gets too carried away with how nicely England appear to be shaping up ahead of the T20 World Cup, it is worth thinking back to this ground on September 13 last year.

England had just dismantled New Zealand by 181 runs to take a 2-1 lead in their one-day international series, Ben Stokes's 182 - the highest score ever by an Englishman in the format building optimism ahead of the flight to India for what turned out to be an historically bad 50-over World Cup defence. "We're not defending anything," captain Jos Buttler had insisted on its eve. He could not have been proved more emphatically correct.

Caveat noted, though, this was a hugely encouraging night a seven-wicket triumph over Pakistan ensuring a 2-0 series victory, England's first in T20s since winning the last World Cup in Australia at the back end of 2022, has been salvaged from the frustrations of a damp week.

Where, on that September day last year, Stokes's epic masked one or two cracks that soon formed chasms, this was a clinical all-round display in which England exposed no glaring weakness.

Then, failures by Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root foreshadowed miserable World Cups for England’s most banked-on batters; here, each of the top-four looked in good touch.