Needing a win of any description to maintain their T20 World Cup hopes alive, England needed to endure a three-hour rain delay on the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, as a sequence of torrential downpours threatened to scrub out their ultimate group-stage fixture, and hand Scotland a move to the Tremendous Eight, even earlier than their very own conflict with Australia might get underway in St Lucia.
However with the cut-off time looming, the clouds lastly broke, and an 11-overs contest was in a position to get underway – which in flip was lowered to 10-a-side after one other brief break for rain. Buttler duly misplaced the toss, and was then bowled for a four-ball duck as Namibia’s seamers discovered the sweaty circumstances to their liking within the powerplay. However with Harry Brook’s 47 not out from 20 balls main the way in which, England reasserted their dominance to safe a 41-run win.
“It is a large aid,” Buttler mentioned on the post-match displays. “It was actually a traumatic day when the rain was coming down. However I assumed we put in a extremely good efficiency. I believe everybody managed that state of affairs nicely. We had been nicely ready once we did play, and we performed nicely.
“I assumed that was a extremely good rating on that wicket,” he added, after England recovered from a dicey 13 for two within the third over to put up a aggressive 122 for five. “After I bought out, I used to be considering 85-90 may be a extremely good rating, with the way in which the ball was sticking within the wicket. However credit score to [Jonny] Bairstow and Brook, a implausible partnership with nice cameos from Moeen [Ali] and Livi [Liam Livingstone]. They’re class gamers.”
The victory nonetheless won’t be sufficient if Scotland can proceed their spectacular type within the match so far by overturning Australia of their ultimate Group B match, which was because of get underway some two hours after England’s match had completed. Requested by Mike Atherton on the presentation whether or not he can be supporting Australia within the circumstances, Buttler replied: “Completely…”
Assuming there are not any extra surprises in retailer in Group B, England will progress to the Tremendous Eight with out a clear thought of the place their type is at, after a irritating run of fixtures that included two wash-outs in opposition to Pakistan in England final month, a 36-run loss to Australia in Barbados, and three matches in opposition to Oman, Scotland and Namibia by which they’ve batted for a complete of 13.1 overs.
“That is simply how it’s,” Buttler mentioned. “I believe everybody’s handled all the things that is been thrown at us rather well. Generally when you have not had an opportunity to spend a lot time within the center, you may create issues on this format. So credit score to these guys, they have been hitting the ball nicely and so they put collectively a significant partnership at this time. We have performed all we will do. We’ll see what occurs.”
