Farbrace outlines areas for improvement

Paul Farbrace admits there is much to work on even though England are potentially one win from the ICC World Twenty20 semi-finals.

With successes over South Africa and Afghanistan under their belt, victory versus holders Sri Lanka on Saturday in Delhi could be enough to help England into the last four.

Eoin Morgan’s team may have to wait until Monday to find out, when South Africa play Sri Lanka in the last Group 1 match.

Ahead of Saturday’s clash at the Feroz Shah Kolta, England are honing their game, having been expensive with the ball against the Proteas and West Indies, and suffered a top-order collapse at the hands of the Afhans.

Assistant Coach Farbrace, who previously was head coach to now-struggling Sri Lanka, said: “We know there are areas to improve on, we’re not going to hide.

“We’re not shirking away from any performance. We’ve been honest, we didn’t get it right with the ball in the first two games and we didn’t bat well in the first 10 overs of the Afghanistan game.

“We were very disappointed with the way that we batted. There’s no fudging that. So we’ve only played half a game again, but we have won which is the most important thing.

Paul Farbrace works on wicketkeeping with Jos Buttler, an area of impressive consistency for England in the World Twenty20

“We’ve put ourselves in the position where if we play well against Sri Lanka and we’re able to win the game, we give ourselves a good chance of going through to the next stage.

“Then you’ve got to play well in the knock-out stages to win the competition.”

While there is still work to do, England’s white-ball cricket has come a long way from last winter’s 50-over World Cup displays.

Chasing 230 against South Africa on Friday is evidence of that but, with much of the current squad relatively young, Farbrace was keen to keep expectations in check.

“I’ve said many times that this team is an inexperienced team that needs to learn and develop, but we’ve got to win (versus Sri Lanka),” he said.

“That, for me, is the key thing. We’re trying to learn, we’re trying to develop, whilst winning at the same time.

“There will be chats about how we can take that forward, without saying we’re going to throw away everything that we’ve done over the last 10 months in terms of moving our white-ball cricket forward.”


Source: ECB

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