Harry Brook impressed with England’s performance as his captaincy debut gets of to a flying start with win over WI
Harry Brook impressed with England’s crushing victory over West Indies, but has urged his team to forget about previous failures.
Although it was against a visiting team that was careless enough with the ball to give up 400 for 8 and never in the hunt to track it down, it was still a near-perfect performance. No. 11 Jayden Seales scored the most runs with 29 not out as they ultimately surrendered to 162 all out.
However, England had plenty of food as runs and wickets were shared, with top-scorer Jacob Bethell (82) and Brook (58) both scoring half-centuries, and Saqib Mahmood and Jamie Overton each taking three wickets as all five bowlers recorded dismissals.
The win put an end to the team’s seven-game losing streak, which was their worst since 2000–01, when they suffered 11 consecutive losses. Although Brook and head coach Brendon McCullum are clearly relieved to begin this new chapter with a win, the captain maintains that regardless of the distance between the two teams or the sample size, the team’s past struggles must be forgotten and inspiration must be drawn from this all-around dominant performance.
“It’s a new era,” Brook said. “Like I’ve said so many times, we’re trying to forget about the past, only focus on what’s ahead of us, and take one game at a time. We’ve done pretty well today so we can take that confidence going forward.
“[It is a] Very good start. To get 400 after being put in and bowl them out for 162 was a pretty exceptional start from the boys. Hopefully we can top that.”
“The boys up top started beautifully and set the template for how we wanted to play and how we want to play for the rest of the series,” he said. “The tempo we batted with throughout the innings was pretty much spot on. We have a lot of depth in our batting, which gave the opportunity to Beth and Jacks to go out there and do what they did.
“I think that’s the way everyone should play in ODI cricket – you’ve got a lot longer than you think. I got out with 20 overs to go and I felt like I was sat watching for about three hours. You can give yourself 10, 15 or 20 balls to get in and then you can soon catch up. “I think he (Bethell) was on about 40 from 40 balls (38 off 39) and he ended up striking at 140 or 150. That’s the type of game it is and you can catch up very quickly.”