Will Jacks stars for England as Sri Lanka flail with bat in T20 World Cup

Over the first hour of this match the grass banks on either side of the wicket filled both in numbers and in belief. Dot balls set off boisterous celebrations, wickets provoked delirium. An increasingly joyous crowd whooped as England’s batters trooped dolefully to and from the middle. Mexican waves rippled around a stadium already, and prematurely as it turned out, in full celebration.

England were restricted to just 146 for nine, an innings that revealed few demons in the pitch – for all that it had spent much of the previous few days sweating under covers – but several in their heads. Again they faltered against spin. Jos Buttler remains in dismal form. Tom Banton was run out seeking a make-believe single, victim of scrambled decision making. Jacob Bethell, rather than giving himself a few moments to get the measure of Maheesh Theekshana, attacked the spinner’s first ball of the game and sent a leading edge to short third.

The crowd delighted in every misstep, and nothing about England’s innings made their total look remotely defendable. They won, in the end, by 51 runs. And with two Super 8 games to play, the next against Pakistan on Tuesday, they are one win from claiming a place in the semi-finals.

Less than three weeks ago, in the last game of their warmup series against Sri Lanka here, England successfully defended 128. Here they had the luxury of another 18. “With those extra runs, we had faith,” Harry Brook said. “We obviously knew that we were under par, but the lads never lost that faith. The main message was to go out and fight. Just make sure that we were on it from ball one. And I thought we were exceptional.”

Sri Lanka’s openers were welcomed rapturously but then, in the third over, Pathum Nissanka – author in their previous two games of a brilliant, unbeaten century against Australia and a 41-ball 62 against Zimbabwe – lifted a Jofra Archer delivery to deep midwicket and, as the side’s totem fell, so too did silence.

It is hard to make much sense of Sri Lanka’s run chase, which at its start appeared routine but rapidly became ridiculous. In the next over Kusal Mendis sent a leading edge back into the hands of Will Jacks, who ended the evening with a third player-of-the-match award during the tournament and found himself on a hat-trick after Pavan Rathnayake sent his first ball looping to cover. It was in celebrating this wicket that England, for the first time, demonstrated genuine belief.

Kamil Mishara followed in the fifth over, Dunith Wellalage in the sixth. At the end of the powerplay they were 34 for five and in the mire. By the time Dushan Hemantha was out hit‑wicket, leaving them 69 for seven, it was as if they were looking for novel ways of getting out. Eventually, after precisely 100 deliveries and with their score a mere 95, Theekshana alone had not managed it.

At the halfway stage the idea that the first two sentences of Brook’s post-match press conference would be: “That was an awesome performance,” and then: “We played the conditions and the situations perfectly today,” felt not just unlikely but downright unthinkable. For days, England had spoken about how they would cast off the tentativeness that held them back during the opening group stage, and yet here they were, pootling. When they sought to roar instead they ummed, and they also erred.

It started, as ever of late, at the top. A year ago, Buttler and Phil Salt were averaging 60.07 as an opening partnership after 15 T20 innings; in 13 since they have averaged 28.69. Here they managed 16, but Salt shrugged off Buttler’s dismissal to produce the only innings of note in the match, eventually dismissed – in part by the excellent Wellalage and in part by his own evident fatigue – having scored 62 off 40 balls.

It took until the fourth delivery of the 10th over for any other Englishman to score a boundary. Jacks was England’s next highest scorer with 21 off 14 – between them, he and Salt scored 57% of their team’s runs and 80% of their boundaries, off 45% of their deliveries. England’s innings might have looked abject at the time, but for all the turn conjured by Wellalage and his colleagues, it was as nothing compared to the twist about to hit this game.