England batter Jason Roy has revealed that he had to overcome dark thoughts and put his hard work in training into action as his 61 helped England beat Bangladesh by eight wickets in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
England had restricted Bangladesh to a considerably below par total of 124 for nine thanks to two wickets in two balls for Moeen Ali and Tymal Mills at either end of a lacklustre innings, while Liam Livingstone also chipped in with the wickets of Mushfiqur Rahim and captain Mahmudullah. In reply, Roy’s blistering knock came off just 38 balls and fittingly came in his 50th T20 international appearance as he answered critics that had been questioning his ability to play left-arm spin at the top of the order in emphatic fashion, after working hard with teammate Liam Dawson in the nets.
“I enjoyed that innings a lot. It’s an area of my game I’ve been working extremely hard on, on slow pitches against left-arm spinners and the angle as such. It was a big game for me to put all my hard work I’ve been doing in the nets into play. Credit to the bowlers, we were chasing a total well below par but we still had to knock it off,” Roy said in an official release issued by ICC.
“I think as a batter, as a cricketer, you always have some darker thoughts going into your mind before the game, ‘What if, this can happen, this can happen.’ But you’ve got to remind yourself that your training has been good, I’ve worked a hell of a lot against Liam Dawson in the nets. He’s bowling so much to me and I’ve got to keep reminding myself to do what I do in training and things will be alright,” he added.
Bangladesh struggled in their first ever T20 clash against England, but Roy insisted they were not easy opponents and revealed his side will continue to focus on themselves rather than worrying about what other teams can do.
“I don’t think they are an easy team to beat, they’ve got some matchwinners out there, some extremely good players. We came out and kept it very simple and stuck to what we do, we don’t look too much into what a lot of other teams do, we make sure everything in our camp is right and we are doing our roles right,” said Roy.
Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah lamented his side’s inability to get off to a good start with the bat as they slipped to a second straight Super 12s defeat to leave the Tigers needing wins against West Indies, South Africa and Australia to stand a chance of progressing to the semi-finals.
“We were disappointed with the batting, it was a good wicket but we didn’t start well and didn’t have any partnerships in the middle either,” said Mahmudullah.“We’ve been lacking a good start, on these wickets it gets difficult later on. We are more skilled hitters than power hitters, we don’t want to change that because we believe we can post good totals. We need to reassess and come up with a good plan,” he added.