It’s a measure of England’s messed-up psyche right now that the start of the Super Eight might finally be the moment that they can relax into their T20 World Cup campaign. The prologue is done, the terrifying mights of Nepal, Scotland and Italy have been put (just about) in their places. Harry Brook’s men can take a deep, cleansing breath, and prepare to face [checks notes] the tournament co-hosts at the scene of one of the most wildly acclaimed victories in their recent history.
Pallekele was the stage, just under a week ago, for Sri Lanka’s turbo-charged victory over a shell-shocked (and soon-to-be-eliminated) Australia. One minute the Aussies were 104 for 0 in the ninth over, and the hosts themselves were the ones contemplating an anxious exit from an unexpectedly competitive Group B. The next thing you knew, their spinners had ripped out Australia’s soul, and Pathum Nissanka had come howling through the breach with his wonderful 52-ball century.
Pallekele’s passionate, opinionated, fanbase made their presence felt that night, and as the concurrent scenes in Colombo have indicated, Sri Lanka is somewhat gripped by World Cup fever right now – notwithstanding their team’s shock loss to a surging Zimbabwe in their final group game.
That six-wicket defeat made no odds to the Super Eight, with the pre-seeded pools now awkwardly featuring all the group winners on one side of the draw and all the runners-up on the other. But it was conceivably an untimely bump back to earth, just in time for Sri Lanka’s reunion with a familiar set of foes. England won five matches out of six on their white-ball warm-up tour of the country last month, including three out of three in the T20I leg.
None of these wins were emphatic, but each of them was sealed by subtly different means – Adil Rashid’s spin strangle in game 1, Tom Banton’s middle-order awakening in game 2, Sam Curran’s guts and glory on a tricky turning deck in game 3, in which England’s back-up tweakers, Will Jacks and Jacob Bethell applied the coup de grace.
The net effect was to give the impression of a well-rounded England team, one that was ready to march into the main event with form to fall back on and faith in their myriad methods. And while that might still be the case in an eminently surmountable Group 2 which also features the known unknowns of New Zealand and Pakistan, the sheer terror of those near-misses against Nepal and Italy cannot be easily forgotten. Nor the disturbing passivity of their old-school trouncing in Mumbai by West Indies.
The stage is therefore set for Sri Lanka to pounce on the big occasion, as they have often done in the recent past, most notably with their wins at the 2019 and 2023 ODI World Cups, when their brace of victories went against the grain of their one-sided bilateral records.
Sri Lanka’s batting has broadly fired across the group stages, with Nissanka leading the line and Kusal Mendis contributing a trio of fifties in four matches, but agonisingly they’ll have to take the stage without the raw pace of Matheesha Pathirana, whose slingy action had England’s top order in all sorts of bother throughout their bilateral engagements. He lasted just four balls of the Australia game before succumbing to a calf strain, and has been replaced by Dilshan Madushanka.
