After a tense four-wicket win over Sri Lanka that puts England into the semi-finals, all the focus will rightly be on Ben Stokes and his match-winning innings in Sydney.
It is a ground that he has enjoyed playing at this year having collected scores of 66 and 60 in the drawn Ashes Test here back in January. Maybe that recent success helped him play his most fluent and most influential T20 knock for England in more than two years.
Perhaps the situation was ideally-suited to his skills and with Dawid Malan unable to bat due to his injury, it left a very clear and defined role for Stokes to fulfil so brilliantly. As good as it was, it wasn’t a classic of the usual T20 variety because the pitch and the opposition didn’t allow it to be.
Once the fielding restrictions of the powerplay were removed and the ball got a little softer, then the used pitch and a plethora of spin meant that batting was really hard and boundaries were tricky to come by. This is where the art of adaptation is so important.
Not just to T20 cricket but in any format of cricket, and it is the players who can adapt to the conditions and the circumstances best who stand head and shoulders above the rest. The equation facing England at the end of the sixth over was that they needed 72 runs from 84 balls at just a smidge over 5 runs per over.
It could not have been simpler thanks to the big hitting talents of both Alex Hales and Jos Buttler. But England’s entire middle order found it tricky to knock the ball into the gaps, or even just keep the ball on the ground and chip away at the target.
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Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali and Sam Curran all perished hitting the ball in the air, while Stokes made a point of playing along the carpet. It was a masterclass in how to chase and overhaul a target, by using smart game management rather than just blasting your way there.
With fresh pitches due for the semi-final and final, the blasting approach is actually likely to be the most successful method for England, but if they find that they need to change, this has been a great example of how to do it.
England have got such a powerful batting line-up, yet it still hasn’t fired at the level it can do, which may mean that we are in for a treat on Thursday. There has been only the odd glimpse of what these batters can do, with Hales in the best form of any, so this would now be the perfect time to peak.
