Rashid: ‘Things change quickly… we have the mindset of champions’

Adil Rashid believes that England have “the mindset of champions” heading into June’s T20 World Cup, and has said they have drawn a line under their failure to defend their 50-over crown in India late last year.

Rashid was ever-present at last year’s World Cup in which England won only three of their nine group-stage games, two of which came after their elimination had been confirmed. The tournament marked the end of a cycle for their 50-over team but Rashid insisted that they should not read too deeply into those struggles ahead of their 20-over title defence.

“The 50 overs was a completely different format,” Rashid said. “We had a poor run or whatever. It is what it is. We didn’t have the best tournament. We didn’t play well: bat, ball, as a team, as a unit – everything. But I think this is a completely different format where currently we’re world champions at that.

“We’re confident. We’ve got the team, we’ve got the mindset, we’ve got the players, we’ve got the experience. If we go out there having the same belief, I think we’ll – hopefully – go all the way. We don’t look at it as ‘we had a bad World Cup’ because that’s a completely different format. It’s 50-over, that’s not T20. We try not to mix both together.

“You have the mindset of champions… we are not thinking of what’s gone on in the past; not thinking about a poor World Cup or people not [being] in form because things change very quickly when you go into a tournament or the first game comes. Prior to that, we may not be playing well but as soon as the tournament comes, people can turn up, teams can turn up and just switch on and win the World Cup.”

Rashid’s comments were echoed by Matthew Mott, England’s white-ball coach, in a recent interview with the Times newspaper. “We are confident,” Mott said. “I think we’ve got a good squad. It is going to come down to the team that reads the conditions best. I don’t think there is any hangover from the last World Cup. It’s a different format and we are going out there to try to win it.”

Mott also suggested that Jos Buttler will base his captaincy more on “gut feel” at the T20 World Cup than in previous years, with less reliance on planning and data. “We’ll do our match-up beforehand, and he [Buttler] is armed with that,” Mott said. “He takes that quite seriously, but he wants to be more spontaneous out on the field.”

Rashid believes that approach will enable England to play with more freedom. “Fifty overs is a lot longer game [than T20] with a lot more thinking, a lot more strategic things, a lot more planning involved,” he said. “T20 is quicker. You have planning to a certain extent but not like that, because you’ve got to go out and express yourself.

“If you have too much planning with T20 cricket then you’re limiting yourself to, maybe, 180 or 170. But if you actually play with freedom, you can get to 250, 300.”

England will name a provisional squad for the tournament early next week, before the ICC’s May 1 deadline.

Rashid has not played competitively since February, when he played three games at the ILT20 after a longer stint in the SA20. He went unsold in December’s IPL auction and no longer plays red-ball cricket so has been at home with his family, and will only have a short build-up to the World Cup when England play four T20Is against Pakistan in late May.

Rashid was speaking at the ECB’s launch of a national tape-ball competition in Birmingham last week as part of its ‘core cities’ programme. Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, said that investing in tape-ball cricket can help the English game look beyond “clubs with picket fences around them” and Rashid believes the competition provides a legitimate talent pathway.

“Haris Rauf came in bowling quick with a tape ball, and next thing you know, he is playing for Pakistan and [in the] PSL,” Rashid said. “These things can happen. If you see somebody with an X-factor with a tape ball, but he’s actually bowling rockets and then you give him a cricket ball and you can do something similar, then you can fast-track them.”