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Alex Carey, David Warner, Steve Smith and all that Ashes pain – England fans forgive you.
Last summer, Travis Head was beating England players in an attempt to regain the Ashes ballot.
- Author, Matthew Henrique
- Paper, BBC sports journalist in Antigua
He was in the middle on that final day at The Oval with Smith, the pair threatening to take Australia home before Stuart Broad’s grand final.
Eighteen months earlier, during England’s most recent adventure, Head flogged Ben Stokes and others in Brisbane for a devastating century.
It was only the second day of the series, but England would never recover.
This time, every one of his 68 runs, including three sixes in three dynamic deliveries late in the game, will have been celebrated by every English fan who followed the events until the early hours of Sunday morning.
When six receptions were dropped – the most by any team in the history of the men’s competition – conspiracy theorists were no doubt scrambling to use their keyboards, especially in light of Josh Hazlewood’s comments this week.
At one point in the chase, Australia, who were already qualified for the Super 8s and allowed Scotland to amass 180-5 – the highest total in a T20 World Cup – needed 89 in seven overs.
England fans should not have worried.
Resisting everything to win is not the Australian way. Maybe they just wanted English fans to sweat along the way.
“More externally than internally,” captain Mitchell Marsh said afterwards when asked about the fuss over the ramification of the results in England.
“We won today and that’s all that matters.”
And that should be the easy part; qualification from a group that should not have led to such drama for the defending champions.
However, England deserve credit for the way they have responded since then.
They dispatched Oman and then Namibia, achieving the swing in net run rate that ultimately sent Richie Berrington’s Scotland home.
Against Namibia they coped well with the stress of the Antiguan weather, which threatened to send them home before the Scots even got painfully close.
England highlighted a relaxed training session at the old Antigua Recreation Ground on Tuesday – a morning of training that turned into a six-hitting contest in the nets – as evidence of a united camp.
They know they’ve been here before.
They won this tournament in the Caribbean in 2010 after getting through the group stage thanks to their net run rate.
They made a similarly incomplete start to their title win 12 years later in Melbourne.
Momentum has been one of your closest friends lately.
But there are still questions about how much we have actually learned about the England team under captain Buttler and coach Matthew Mott over the last two weeks.
They pass, but have they left behind their poor over-50s World Cup defense from last autumn?
Victories against two associated sides, even improving performance, are not enough to say conclusively.
Ten tricky overs against Scotland before rain and the defeat to Australia in Barbados point otherwise.
England, however, will now take their place in a Super 8 group that includes South Africa, co-hosts West Indies and intriguing prospect the USA.
It’s a quartet with no obvious favorite.
The hosts, who England face for the first time in the early hours of Thursday morning, were almost beaten by Papua New Guinea in the first game, South Africa narrowly escaped against Nepal on Saturday, while the USA will no longer have the home field advantage with the group played exclusively in the Caribbean.
If England progress, a semi-final or final against Australia could again await.
There, you suspect, Australians would be much less charitable.
