England captain Jos Buttler summed up his side’s crushing victory over Oman with two simple words: “job done”.
A slow start to the tournament left their T20 World Cup hopes hanging in the balance but a whirlwind eight-wicket in Antigua on Thursday, chasing down a meagre target of 48 in just 19 dizzying deliveries, has flipped the script.
The punishing scale of their success – the quickest ever at a World Cup – has dramatically transformed their standing in Group B, catapulting their net run-rate well ahead of Scotland’s ahead of the final round of fixtures.
They are now well on course to progress to the Super Eight stage, with another win against Namibia on Saturday followed by an Australia win over Scotland guaranteed to send them through.
“It was job done today,” said Buttler.
“I thought the tone was set by the bowlers: take early wickets and restrict them. They bowled brilliantly, they bowled a good line and length.
“(The batters) just looked to be positive. We spoke in the lead up to this game, that if we get the chance we have to try and take advantage of the net run-rate and we managed to do that today.”
England have faced some unwanted scrutiny since landing in the Caribbean, with a lethargic bowling performance in a washout against Scotland a poor defeat at the hands of Australia getting their title defence off on the wrong foot.
But, buoyed by a performance more befitting world champions, Buttler allowed the criticism to wash over him.
“I’ve been around long enough to know that people make comments,” he said.
“We know what’s going on in the dressing room. We have another huge match to come. We can only control what we do and all our focus is on that.”
Leg-spinner Adil Rashid enjoyed his day out at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, taking four for 11 from a four-over spell as the Omani lineup failed to read his variety of leg-breaks and googlies.
The stage had been set by a blast of pace from Mark Wood and Jofra Archer, who each claimed three for 12 and had too much fire for the associate nation to live with.
In skittling their opponents for the second lowest total against England, the attack paved the way for the batters to gallop over the winning line quickly enough to turn the tables on Scotland.
“We’re very pleased, we needed a win and a comprehensive one,” said Rashid.
“We’ve got another game now in two days and hopefully we can do the same thing. We could see ourselves getting into a position to think about (net run-rate) but we didn’t set ourselves to do that from the beginning. First and foremost we needed a win.
“If we got into a position to do it we knew we had to take it on and get the runs in 5.3 overs. With the bat we could score those runs in four or five overs.
“Things just started to fall for us and we got the runs in the first three or four.”
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