ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2022

October 31, 2022

Paul Collingwood

The Gabba

England

Pre Match Media Conference

Q. Has this felt like a bit of a different style of T20 this tournament with the ball sort of holding the edge in a lot of the venues, and has it led to a rethink of a few tactics along the way?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: A little bit. I think from most of the games we've seen a lot more movement with the new ball, and obviously that's prolonged for longer periods than normal.

There's been a fair bit of grass on the wickets, which means that the ball itself hasn't got tired as quickly. Generally in T20 cricket you get through the first over or two of any kind of movement, and it goes pretty straight from then on.

But yeah, you're right, there's been a bit more swing and seam movement during this tournament so far. But in many ways, I guess it's to the batters to try to get that swing off the ball as quickly as possible, and we know sometimes one ball into the stands can make that ball pretty tired pretty quickly.

We've also got bowlers who can utilise the swing, as well, so it's made it a little bit more interesting and a little bit more difficult than usual for the batsmen.

Q. Just on this game specifically tomorrow, obviously you weren't able to get on the field against Australia to sort of start to make amends for what happened against Ireland. Is there a bit of pent-up frustration of not playing ahead of this game and the guys are keen to get back on the field and try and put things right?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: Yeah, I think the frustration came from not being able to play in such a big fixture. You look at the fixtures before the World Cup and see that you're playing Australia at the MCG, and that's mouthwatering fixture. So it was disappointing not to play that and not being able to get out.

But the boys have trained fantastically well over the past couple of days. There's a lot of excitement around because we know if we get it right in the next four games then we've got an opportunity to win a World Cup.

It's almost into the knockout stages now in terms of how we've got to go about our cricket. It's must-win games, and this is why we play the game. This is the positions that you want to be in to have an opportunity to win a World Cup. Tomorrow hopefully kick-starts our momentum and if we can put in a good performance tomorrow, then it will give us a lot of confidence for the last three games.

Q. Does the wash-out mean it's probably more likely that you'll be able to stick with the same quick bowlers again? I'm guessing workloads are not a massive concern at the moment?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: Yeah, exactly. The one good thing, I guess, is you can prepare how you need to prepare going into a fixture against New Zealand, and history shows you that it's always been a tightly fought game. But the bowlers are fresh; they're raring to go. The batters have been able to do a lot of specific confidence work in the nets and understand how they can go about the task tomorrow night on what usually is a really good Brisbane wicket. It's the ground we played the warmup game against Pakistan, and the boys enjoyed the surface. Yeah, we're really looking forward to tomorrow night.

Q. I don't know if you all would have seen the game between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe yesterday where Sean Williams from Zimbabwe said the pitch played a little bit more spin. Is that something that England is going to reconsider heading into the game tomorrow?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: No, we'll just have to see how the conditions are. Every game that you turn up on, you don't want to go in with too many preconceived ideas. The one kind of good thing about this team is if we get our aggression right with both bat and ball, then we generally go on and put teams under a serious amount of pressure.

We'll just have to wait and see what the conditions are like and then adjust accordingly to however they are. But generally we haven't seen a hell of a lot of spin during this tournament. All the problems have come from movement on the ball with swing and a bit of seam.

Q. Funny you should mention conditions because it's been sunny for the most part of last week in Brisbane, and all of a sudden today it's a little bit overcast. Is that a concern seeing that England are coming in from a wash-out game versus Australia?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: Well, it would be nice to get the full 40 overs in tomorrow night, so keep our fingers crossed that we get the right conditions to be able to do that. In World Cups you want to see sides competing against each other, the best sides competing against each other in an equal game. Hopefully tomorrow night the rain stays away and we can manage to do that.

Boys are very much looking forward to just getting to play some cricket and going to show their skills.

Q. How is the mood in the camp seeing that the last game was a wash-out so you've had a little bit of extra time, if you want to call it that, with no actual cricket being played coming into a game versus New Zealand tomorrow? How is the morale on the team?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: It's really good. The boys are upbeat. They're confident. They've been doing plenty of work in the nets. You know, we couldn't be more ready in terms of the amount of balls we've hit in the nets and the amount of balls we've bowled in training.

The guys just want to get out in the middle now. It's frustrating when you've got the rain around in Melbourne. It's almost like English conditions there. It's nice to come up to Brisbane where it's a lot warmer, and we're all looking forward to getting a full 40 overs in tomorrow night.

Q. How are you looking at the final four teams in the T20 World Cup, the final four teams?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: Which four teams do I think are going to be in the final?

Q. Yeah.

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: All I know, I would like England to be in that Final Four teams. There's been some good cricket played so far and some exciting cricket, but those tables are pretty close at the moment, so it's impossible to say who's going to be in the Final Four.

Q. Just wanted to ask about Ben Stokes. I know his record in international cricket doesn't need questioning in a sense, but his T20 position has not been quite as stable over his career and he's not quite got going in this tournament. Do you think those two things are linked a little bit, that he's not quite had the same stability in T20 that perhaps he's had in Test cricket and before he required ODI cricket, and do you expect him to find his groove in the next couple of games?

PAUL COLLINGWOOD: Yeah, of course. I guess the one person that you want in your team when the pressure is on is Ben Stokes. We all know what he's capable of, and not just match-winning innings, but match-winning innings under serious amounts of pressure.

I know well that if it comes down to the crunch that you want a man like Ben Stokes walking out. Not just what he gives with the bat, the options with the ball, and the skill level he brings into the field, as well. You've got to remember, he's an allrounder, so it's not always just the runs that he makes, but it's everything else that he gives.

But I'm pretty confident there's an innings just around the corner, and now we're coming into the crucial part of the World Cup, and it's almost a knockout stage for us. It's must-win games.

You always see Ben come to the fore in those situations.